


41 Days of Lucy

by indraaas



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, every chapter is a day of christmas from that song, except cobra's already graduated so, so many stupid shenanigans, stem vs humanities is real in this fic, various ft members make appearances throughout but like no need to over tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 08:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indraaas/pseuds/indraaas
Summary: On the first day of Christmas, he fell into a pear tree, and she got frostbite trying to help him.





	1. Doctor in a Pear Tree

"I'm a failure," Lucy Heartfilia moaned, belly-flopping onto the sofa. "Plue. What kind of life am I living."

Her dog merely huffed before burying himself between two throw pillows, intent on ignoring his owner. Lucy pouted, poking his back lightly. "Even  _you_  don't wanna talk to me in my time of need...I hate my group members so much, honestly, you don't understand."

And the third year psychology major had every right to. Her group was not only composed of the most unreliable people on the planet, but they had done absolutely nothing to help with the work, even though Lucy had painstakingly outlined exactly what the other three were supposed to do. Add to the fact that they had called her a half hour earlier asking her to finish up the project, citing some emergency or the other, she was royally pissed off.

Given the loud beat of what sounded like EDM in the background, Lucy hoped somebody got alcohol poisoning.

"Should I be Shakespeare dramatic, Plue?" Lucy asked, sitting up. Her sofa was pushed right up against the balcony door, with a gap large enough to let the sliding door open and shut. If she angled herself just right, she could see the snow flutter to the ground softly. Lucy nodded. Yes, that sounded like a lovely idea. Then, she could plot her revenge.

Lucy curled into a small ball, staring out the window pensively. The world was eerily still, and the snow fall was almost too slow to be real. The large pear tree right beside her complex was weighed down by the heavy snow, to the point of which she was certain one or two branches were going to snap off.

God, she hated the Christmas season.

The dreaded holiday was several weeks away, and already houses were decorated top to bottom in twinkle lights, tinsel, wreaths, and all sorts of bells. Stores had switched out the plastic fangs and goblin masks for Santa hats and oversized sweaters with snowflake patterns the second October had become November. Now, three weeks into month, Lucy was getting sick and tired of it all.

She hated the fakeness of it all. How everybody seemed to just come together for one day to exchange meaningless gifts and pretended they liked each other before going back to shit talking everybody until the next major commercialized holiday rolled around. Mest had told her once before that she sounded like a bitter old spinster, but Lucy had valid reasons for disliking Christmas.

She had never had a real, family and friends style Christmas growing up. Every year was spent in stuffy dress, mingling with the uptight children of other business tycoons as the adults made more business deals and mergers. Gifts to the kids were cheques worth hundreds of dollars, and even though her piggy bank exceeded several thousand by the end of the night, Lucy always left empty and dissatisfied. She never kept the money, anyway. She would donate it in increments to the local orphanage via Mrs Spetto, and tell her father she had spent the money on new jewelry when he asked.

Even though she had spent every Christmas after the age of fifteen in Natsu's basement with the rest of their friends, now that they were in university, the time they had to spend with each other was growing shorter and shorter, and she knew that there would be no get-together this year because of their schedules. For the first time in six years, she would be alone again, and she hated it.

Lucy was drawn out of her thoughts by a muffled curse, and she looked out the window just in time to see a body fall into the pear tree and then off that to the ground below. A string of twinkle lights swung like a pendulum in front of her balcony ominously.

"Oh my God!" Lucy shrieked, scrambling for her front door. She didn't bother with a coat or boots, and voice in the back of her head told her she would regret going out into the frozen tundra that was Crocus in nothing but booty shorts and a tank top, but she had more pressing matters to attend to.

She lived on the second floor, so falling from her level wouldn't be overly serious, but she had no idea what floor the person had fallen from. The blonde hoped that the sheer volume of the yell in combination of the twinkle lights meant that they lived only a floor or two above her. Twinkle lights were only so long, she reasoned with herself. They had to live close by.

The thing Lucy hated about the metal doors that led to the back courtyard was the metal bar she had to press in to open it. It took her entire body weight to get it to budge, and even then it needed to be pressed harder. Once she opened it, her exposed skin was hit with a blast of arctic air, and she squealed.

"Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold...!" Lucy chattered her teeth as she sprinted to the stirring body. She could hear him (the voice was way too deep to be female) swearing violently, stringing together the curse words in ways Lucy hadn't thought possible to create an effective medium for his frustration.

"-stocking fuck!" he snarled as Lucy finally dropped to her knees beside him. Her legs immediately started burning due to the cold, and she was half numb at this point, but she could care less. There was no blood staining the white snow, and he seemed lucid enough.

He was alive.

"Are you fucking insane?" he yelled, sweeping his one eye over her barely clothed body. "It's in the negatives and snowing, you stupid-ass blonde!"

"S-s-saw you f-f-f-fall," she stammered, trying her damnest to speak in a level tone. "C-c-c-came to help. How b-b-bad?"

"Third floor," he said. "Think I bruised a rib hitting the tree, might have a concussion."

"I'll c-c-call the amb-b-bulance," Lucy would have smacked her head if she was capable of that much movement. Her phone was halfway across the room in her apartment, hidden away so she could ignore her group members as they kept checking back to confirm she was doing their work. Catching this, the man sighed. "Jacket pocket closest to you."

Lucy's trembling fingers slid into the pocket with great effort. She almost moaned in relief as the fluffy interior provided some heat to her frostbitten fingers. The digits hit something solid, and she pulled it out, being careful to not drop it in the snow. "P-p-password?"

"Meth," he said. "Don't ask. My friend set it and I don't know how to change it."

"S-s-settings," Lucy suggested as she tried to hit the emergency call button. Her fingers were so numb at this point she couldn't even feel them touch the screen. It was a disconcerting feeling, being able to see the movement but not feel the sense associated with it.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"M-m-m-my neighb-b-b-bour f-f-f-fell off-f-f-f his b-b-balcony," Lucy shivered violently. God, she should have at least put a sweater on. That way, she could've draped it over legs for a bit of coverage. She was sure she was going blue in some areas.

"We'll send an ambulance right away, ma'am," the operator paused for a second. "You'll be needing some...help for yourself, correct?"

"Yeah," Lucy said. "B-b-b-blankets. Please."

"She's got frostbite!" the man shouted loud enough that he would be heard on the other end. "Tell the stupid fucks to hurry it up or she'll start losing toes!"

If she had the energy to, she would have cried.

* * *

In the end, it had taken over an hour to warm her up to healthy levels.

She was lucky, according to the doctors. She had managed to avoid the blisters that were common to severe cases. They called it a Christmas miracle.

She called it pure dumb-luck.

Dressed in the thickest, fluffiest pyjamas she could find in the gift shop, Lucy padded her way to her neighbour's hospital room. She resisted the urge to glide on the pristine floors in her fuzzy socks. She had to look somewhat mature to make up for her terrible first impression to the man.

Though the bright red pyjama set decorated with little Christmas trees and snowmen would certainly make her look stupider than before. If not that, then the Santa hat one of the nurses had shoved on her head with a smile certainly would.

"Excuse me?" Lucy knocked on the open glass door as she poked her head in. "I hope I'm not interrupting..."

"Oh," the man looked up from the papers on his lap. "It's you. Yeah, come in."

He was pretty attractive, Lucy thought as she edged forward. His maroon hair was slightly damp and stuck to his rich, mocha skin on some places. His left eye was sealed shut by a thick scar that bisected it, running down to just in the middle of his cheekbone, and just above his eyebrow. His functioning eye was a startling shade of violet. From what Lucy could tell from his arms, exposed by the pasty hospital gown, he was fairly muscled.

"I'm Lucy, by the way. Lucy Heartfilia," she introduced herself as she sat down in the chair next to the bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she examined the papers. One of them looked like the discharge forms she'd filled out, and the other had headache inducing words and numbers.

"Dr Erik Vivas," he replied absent-mindedly, signing the form in a flourish. Lucy snickered slightly, and that was when he looked up. "Something funny about that?"

"No, it's just...am I the only one who finds it ironic that a doctor is in a hospital bed?" Lucy laughed aloud. The corner of his lip curled up in vague amusement. "Not that kind of doctor."

"Oh," she glanced away sheepishly. "My bad."

"Happens all the time," he shrugged it off, righting the papers into a neat stack and sticking them in an envelope by his bedside. He turned back to her and crossed his arms over his chest, wincing slightly. "I'm the Ph.D kind of doctor."

"Oh!" Lucy perked up. "What in? I was thinking about getting one myself, but I'm dying in third year already, so I'm clearly not cut out for it..."

"I'm a toxicologist with the CDC," he said. Lucy's jaw dropped in awe. Her apartment complex was home to a variety of characters, and she knew for a fact that almost all of them paid their rent with money gained in very illegal ways. Had it not been for the dirt cheap rent, Lucy would've moved out to avoid being murdered long ago, but alas, she was a broke university student and this was all she could afford.

The point was, Lucy had been certain from day one that her upstairs neighbour was one of many drug dealers in the building. It was the only way to explain the positively vile smells coming from upstairs. Lucy wasn't sure if illegal drugs smelled gross, but she operated on the assumption that some did.

How wrong she was.

"I thought you were a drug dealer!" she blurted out. His eyebrow shot up in surprise, and she clapped her hands over her mouth in horror. "No, wait!" she hastily began to correct herself. "It's because your apartment reeked-oh, God, don't take that in offense, either! Ah, I can't talk today-!"

"Calm down," he chuckled. It was a pleasant sound, Lucy decided as she lowered her hands to her lap. Deep, rumbling, and with a bit of a gravelly tone to it. "I only got my Ph.D this year. I used to do practice labs in my kitchen before the actual lab in class. Don't ask where I got the equipment or materials from."

"Oh," Lucy said in relief. "Wow, that's a relief. Sorry, I just...we really started off on the wrong foot. And I feel like I'm making it worse, so I should probably leave before-"

"Dr Vivas," a stout doctor entered the room, and Lucy slowly slid back into her seat, hoping to blend in with the ugly plastic chair as much as possible. The doctor smiled kindly at Lucy before picking up the charts at the end of the bed and reading over them. "You seem to be in good shape. You fractured two ribs, and you've a concussion, but you're cleared for discharge."

"Papers are here," Dr Vivas pointed to the envelope. "I can leave now?"

"Yes," Dr Kaur, as her ID card read, nodded. She pursed her lips in thought, glancing at Lucy for a moment. "Although...do you have anyone to look after you for a few days? You know concussions."

"Nobody," Dr Vivas scowled. "And it's not the first time I've had one of these, I can handle myself-"

"All the more reason to have someone with you," Dr Kaur said firmly, turning to Lucy fully. "Would you feel comfortable looking after him for a few days? Just monitor his symptoms to make sure he's recovering well."

Lucy opened and shut her mouth, flicking her gaze between Dr Kaur and Dr Vivas. The former had a kind, open look on her face, while the latter seemed to dare her to say yes.

Lucy weighed the pros and cons. On one hand, he would likely dislike her for forcing herself into his life out of the blue, but at least he would be alive. At the same time, a selfish part of Lucy whispered that maybe she could use this as an excuse to have some company, if not just for a few days. Who knew what would come of it?

It wasn't like she had anything to lose.

"Sure," Lucy agreed. Dr Kaur clapped her hands together once, smiling broadly. "Excellent! I'll be right back after filing these discharge papers to explain how this all works."

As the brunette took the papers from Dr Vivas's bedside and exited the room, Lucy couldn't help but feel a flash of trepidation run through her. What had she just signed herself up for? She had zero medical experience, and had quite literally just met the man in what was potentially the most unconventional way possible, and now she was his official caretaker.

Mest had always told her Natsu's penchant for getting into borderline insane situations would eventually make its way to her.

"Well," Dr Vivas sighed irritably. "Your place or mine?"

Lucy fought the blush that sought to flood her cheeks at the unintentional double entendre. Although, judging by the barely there smirk on his lips in combination with the twinkle of mischief in his eye, he knew full well how his question could have been interpreted. The little shit  _liked_  seeing her squirm!

These were clearly going to be the longest few days of her life.


	2. Fifty Percent off Turtle Doves

The first thing Lucy registered as she stepped into Dr Vivas's apartment was the overwhelming stench of pine needles.

The fresh scent burned her nose and caused her eyes to water, and she swore she could taste the mint in the back of her throat. It was almost as if he'd taken a Christmas tree and dunked it into a vat of water to boil.

"Ah, fuck," he swore at her side, not bothering to take off his shoes as he stormed into the kitchen. "I forgot to turn off the air fresher mix."

"Air fresher mix?" Lucy coughed, placing her fluffy slippers on the shoe rack before following him into the tiny kitchen. Despite the increased burn, her eyes widened as she took in to appearance of the room. Where her counters were cluttered with dishes she never had the energy to wash, his were full of neatly arranged graduated cylinders and flasks that she could vaguely remember using in high school for science class. Though most were empty, a select few had liquids of various colours, and there were sealed jars nearby with powders and solid chunks of god-knows-what inside.

Dr Vivas held a cloth to his nose as he twisted the knobs on a Bunsen burner, glaring at the flask of bubbling green liquid on top. "I've been trying to make something a little more potent for the air wicks that you plug into the wall. This turned out to be extra."

"What is in that, raw pine?"

"Yeah," he said, unplugging the burner from the wall and sighing irritably. "There goes a good twenty down the drain..."

Lucy wisely opted to ignore that last comment. She could hear Natsu in the back of her head supplying the term 'plausible deniability'. If Dr Vivas got arrested for purchasing illegal items, there was no way she was going down with him. Sometimes, ignorance truly was bliss.

"So, I don't suppose you could tell me just how you managed to fall off your balcony?" Lucy asked, backtracking quickly when he turned to stare at her blankly. "I-I mean, it's not really my business, but I figured...if I'm looking after you-"

"I was trying to decorate the roof of the balcony by standing on the rail. Lost my footing," was his curt response as he pushed past her for the living room. Lucy stuck close to his heels, hoping to avoid setting anything off. If there was one thing she knew about people with a science-y background, it was that they were liable to make things explode. Whether accidental or not was still up for debate.

"Are you going to follow me to make sure I don't collapse while changing my clothes?" the blonde squeaked, reddening. Though his face was mostly expressionless, his eye shone with a slyness she hadn't known one person could possess.

"No! I'll just...wait...here," Lucy pointed to his sofa awkwardly. Dr Vivas shrugged. "Fine. I'll be out after a shower. Feel free to use the television. God knows you might actually make good use of that stupid deluxe package I never bother with..."

As he shuffled off for the bathroom, Lucy glanced around the room curiously. Her sharp mind catalogued every item of significance in the room, and she was somewhat alarmed to find that there really wasn't much. There were only a few worn-in looking things in the room; the sofa, the coffee table in front of that, and the dining table, which was laden with half opened boxes of Christmas decorations, obviously recently purchased.

The TV had a thin layer of dust on it, and the floor around the dining table was oddly pristine, as if the chairs had never been pulled out from their spots. There were no pictures around the room; only certificates that boasted of his achievements.

It was highly impersonal, and Lucy was fairly certain that he only lived here in name. His life was centered around his work, and that made this house no longer home.

It was odd to think that she wasn't alone in feeling so bland.

Shaking her head from her musings, Lucy stared at the Christmas tree propped up by the balcony door. Poorly decorated, the tree was a mess of heavy layers of tinsel and mismatched twinkle lights. The ornaments were of the classic round variety, and the topper was hastily shoved on, now teetering precariously from its spot.

Lucy clicked her tongue. The asymmetry bothered her. It was as if he'd never decorated a tree in his life. Judging by the many flyers open to the pages on Christmas trees that littered the ground by the trunk, it was the most likely case.

It wouldn't hurt to make some adjustments while she waited.

* * *

"What the fuck," she heard Dr Vivas say, just as she finished tucking the end of a strand of tinsel into a branch.

"Your tree was a mess," she responded, turning around and immediately thanking whatever diety existed that she could blame the redness of her cheeks on the hot clothes she wore.

She had been right to think that he was muscular, though the hospital gown had done him no justice. He wore a tight, gray muscle shirt that did little to hide his lean build, and baggy sweatpants that clung to narrow hips. Shaking her head, she met his gaze and smiled. "I hope you don't mind!"

"What happened to the decorations?" he asked, padding forward till he stood by her side. "There's barely anything on here."

"Your decorations were...pretty bad, I'm not gonna lie. Some of them were broken, and others were just a straight up disaster."

The tree was now mostly in decent condition. The tinsel was evenly spaced, with a neatly strung selection of twinkle lights to fill in the gaps. Lucy had managed to find several un-boxed decorations that had taken up the rest of the space. To anyone else, it would've looked like a lovely tree, but to Lucy, it was as fake and impersonal as it got.

"That's what I get for buying decorations from a garage sale," he grumbled, bending down to pick up the flyers from the floor. Lucy heard his breath hitch at the movement. The position must have been constricting his sore ribs. She quickly dropped to her knees, scooping up the papers and shooing him away. "Dr Vivas-"

"Erik," he said.

"R-right. Erik. Don't stress yourself!"

"Did you just design the tree after this?" he tapped one of the flyers in her grasp.

"Yeah. I mean, I figured you had them out for a reason, so I found one that would work well for this...did you not want it that way?"

"No, it looks fine, I guess," he stood up, tugging the flyers out of her grasp and tossing them on the coffee table as he stretched out on the sofa. "My friends decided I was going to host the annual Christmas party this year so I don't have an excuse to skip out like I usually do. Genius idea on their part, really."

Lucy frowned at that. "Do you not like Christmas either?"

"Either?" Erik raised an eyebrow. "Preppy princess doesn't like Christmas? Call the doctor, I think I just expired."

Lucy scowled. She hated being called princess. All it did was bring back awful memories of being waited on hand-and-foot by people with disgustingly fake smiles and underlying intentions that made her skin crawl to this very day.

"If you need anything, I left my number on your fridge," she muttered, rising and storming for the door. Suddenly, the light atmosphere was too heavy for her to stick around. "I have a project to finish."

"Oi-"

She didn't bother to stick around to hear what he had to say.

* * *

"What do you mean you didn't finish your part?" Lucy exhaled steadily as her vice-like grip on the phone increased.

_"I didn't know that part was also due! Can we just, like, ask for an extension or something?"_

Frustration bubbled in the blonde's chest. How could her group members be so utterly stupid? How could they have even gotten accepted into this program with organizational skills as lacking as theirs? Not for the first time, Lucy wished she could just crawl into a ditch and be done with it all.

"No," she ground out. "We can't ask for an extension. The professor told us the requirements two weeks ago. She gave us a checklist. You're in third year, for Christ's sake!"

 _"Hey,"_  the person on the other line chided teasingly _. "Don't take the Lord's name in vain! Real talk, prof's chill, she won't give a fuck. Can't you just do my part for me? It'll only take, like, an hour or two, max!"_

Lucy hung up and launched her phone across the room. Then, she drew her knees up to her chest and dug her nails into her scalp as the beginnings of tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

She couldn't take today anymore.

Why did her group members think it was okay to take advantage of her like that? Why did anyone think it was remotely okay to shirk out on their responsibilities? Lucy's breath grew ragged, and she could taste her tears in her mouth. Why was it always her? Every other group in the class managed to get along fine, but with her? No, she got stuck with the people barely scraping by with a fifty, who had zero shits to give, and didn't seem to realize that it wasn't just their grade to share.

Add to the fact that she now had an injured neighbour to look after...Lucy felt a pang of guilt at that thought. She hadn't meant to blow up at him like that. She was just so frustrated with everything, and the word...she knew he didn't understand why she loathed being called princess so much, but it still had her lashing out at him.

Perhaps she would go apologize after this sobfest.

"I know you're mad, but curling into a ball in the middle of the kitchen won't solve anything," Lucy screeched, jerking her head up so quickly that she bashed it against the cupboard behind her. She blinked back the tears furiously, just barely able to make out Erik crouching in front of her.

"Did you hit your head that hard?" he muttered, reaching for her jaw and pulling her forward. His fingers prodded her skull, and she winced when he found a sore spot. "No. J-just...my group members..."

She was surprised to see him shudder visibly. "Say no more. Let me guess. They forgot the due date."

"And they want me to finish their half of the work!" Lucy said, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. Erik stood up suddenly, shuffling into her living room. Lucy scrambled after him, making sure to pick up her phone from the floor on her way out. She was surprised to see the screen was as pristine as ever, a testament to the prowess of the Otter case she had wasted nearly forty dollars on.

"This is your work?" he pointed to the neatly organized pile of papers on her desk. She nodded. He then pointed to the file on the other end. "And this is theirs?"

"Yeah. Wait-!" Lucy shouted when he pulled out a lighter from the depths of his pockets and waved the fire on top of the file. Cold horror flushed through her veins as the work literally went up in flames. That was part marks gone down the drain. "Why would you-"

"They never handed in their work to you," he shrugged. "So you had absolutely no idea they weren't done. You couldn't do anything about it."

The blonde was sure her jaw was unhinged at this point. How was it possible that he was so brutal? Even the likes of Natsu would have difficulty pulling this off so nonchalantly.

"That was savage," she murmured. Erik grinned. "You think this is bad? You should have seen the shit I did to my group members in school. They called me Cobra for a reason."

"Again," Lucy said, suddenly somewhat lightheaded. "Savage. I need to sit down. Wow. I...wow."

She fell back into the plush cushions of her sofa, covering her mouth with her hands. For the first time in days it was like she could breathe easy. Her shoulders sagged in relief. Her head was suddenly so uncluttered that it was painful to be able to think freely.

"You're an angel," she said in a muffled voice. "A literal angel from the heavens above."

"Never been called an angel before. Guess there's a first time for everything," she bounced slightly as he fell back next to her, thumbing through her report with a calculating eye. "This isn't half bad, actually. Some errors, but nothing glaring."

"Wanna edit for me?" the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Erik shot her a vaguely amused glance as he held out his hand. "Pen."

"How did you get into my house?" she asked after several silent moments.

"Balcony," he responded. "That string of lights is very strong and I feel the need to call in a physicist to check it out."

He yelped when she smacked him square in the chest. "Oi! Injured person here, find your chill!"

"You climbed into my apartment from my balcony while injured?" she snarled. "Oh my God, what if you broke-"

"I'm more concerned by the fact that you're not concerned that I confessed to breaking into your apartment."

"Natsu does it so often I'm used to it," she curled into a ball in the corner of her couch, burrowing herself into the warmth. "At least you haven't snuck into my bed while I was sleeping."

"You need new friends," he said. Lucy laughed, turning her head to stare at him. "Trust me, they're like cockroaches. Impossible to get rid of."

"I did an experiment in roaches in my first year, trying to find what poison would off 'em. I shit you not, it took tetrodotoxin to finally get kill them," at her confused look, he clarified. "Puffer fish poison."

"Natsu once dragged me to this sushi joint down by the waterfront in grade eleven with a couple of our friends. Ordered some fugu as a dare for one of us to try," Lucy smiled when her charge of sorts groaned. "Don't tell me..."

"Chef wasn't licensed to cook the stuff, so our buddy Gajeel ended up poisoned. Thank God Wendy was there. I'm not sure what mumbo jumbo she worked, but she kept him kind of safe until the paramedics got there. Gajeel is fine now, but he hasn't eaten sushi since," Lucy paused. "Neither have I, actually."

"I know a place by Oak Town, sells the best goddammit fugu this side of the hemisphere. I'll take you sometime," Lucy blushed at that. It was nice to hear that he had no immediate plans to cut her out of his life. He seemed like a rather intriguing person. In the brief hours that she had know him, he had proved that he really didn't care much for what was considered normal. How many people could she safely say owned a lab in their kitchen, and found no wrong in lighting project papers on fire?

"Why did you come visit me anyway?"

"Oh, right," he dropped the pen in his lap, looking away somewhat shyly. "My tree is fucked up. It looks fake as hell and doesn't sit right. Figured you'd blow a gasket if I went out to shop for more decor without you knowing in case I kicked the bucket on the street."

"I'm coming!" Lucy exclaimed. "J-just to make sure you don't tax yourself."

The disbelief was clear on his face, but he let the matter drop in favour of scribbling in the margins of her paper.

"We spell 'colour' with a 'u', genius."

"Blame spellcheck!"

* * *

"The glitter will stick to my floor for the next three thousand years, no."

"Every Christmas decoration has glitter on it, Erik!" Lucy threw her hands up in exasperation. "You are being so difficult, oh my God."

"Those ones don't," he poked the window display. "See? Reasonable, too."

Lucy's eye bugged out of her head as she read the crisp price tag. "Fifty bucks is not reasonable. I get that you're a doctor and probably able to wipe your ass with hundreds, but no."

"Fine," he tugged on her winter coat and lead her up the street. "I forget how cheap university students have to live to survive."

It had been approximately two hours since they had ventured into downtown Crocus. Lucy had to disguise her laughter at his attire as a cough when they first met up in the lobby, because he was wearing at least three coats under his final jacket, and his earmuffs were as fluffy as Plue before his grooming. For lack of a better word, Erik was adorable. Though now, she wished she had thought as far ahead as he had. She was freezing.

"You're acting as if it's been decades since you were in my position," she muttered, huddling close to him. Her coat was doing little to ward off the chill, though she supposed it was her fault for getting it off the sales rack at a warehouse. She eyed Erik's sturdy looking North Face jacket with envy. At least he was toasty.

"True Religion is having a sale?" Lucy gasped. "We have to go after!"

"Kids your age know what True Religion is?" she heard him mumble. "Damn, here I thought it was just a thing of my era."

"Oh, bugger off, gramps," she shoved him lightly, giggling when he retaliated with equal force. "Again. Injured person here. Don't abuse the defenseless."

"Defenseless, my ass," Lucy laughed. She grabbed his arm and pulled him away just in time for a frazzled looking mom speed by with her double stroller, yammering a mile a minute into her phone.

"Someone's in a hurry to hit up Macy's," he commented, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. Lucy tucked her chin in, hoping to hide her blush in her scarf. His adjustment trapped her hand between his side and the arm she had pulled, and he didn't seem to notice it. If he did, then he didn't care much for the implication.

"Sale!" she squealed, spotting a chalkboard advertising fifty percent off tree ornaments. Erik sped up, grabbing the door and opening it for her. Reluctantly, she pulled her hand back to herself and shuffled in, sighing in relief when the heat of the shop hit her frozen cheeks.

"You're gonna get frostbite again if you don't fix your scarf, genius," Erik chided, unwinding the thin material and eyeing it with disdain. "I've seen thongs made of thicker material. Where did you get this, Victoria's Secret?"

"Thrift shop, actually," she snatched it back. "And it's just old. It was made of stronger stuff way back when!"

"Now who's the grandpa?" he called as he moved to examine the shelf of ornaments. "We don't need much, do we? The round ones are there already."

"We should get some elves. And maybe candy canes and gingerbread men!" Lucy clapped her hands. She could remember the first time she had decorated a tree. Igneel Dragneel had been horrified to learn that she had never decorated one in her life, and had all but refused to let her leave the basement until she had helped set up. By the end of the day, Lucy had learned how to string popcorn and properly wrap a tree with lights, and she had never been happier to do something so mundane.

"Do we have to?" Erik looked almost petulant. "It's so...childish."

"Do not try to make Christmas of all holidays an adult situation! We are going to be literal five year old for this. Ooh! This is cute," Lucy pulled down a box of assorted ornaments, pointing out the various objects displayed on the box. "See? We even have little drummers! Oh, this is so cute, please? If I pick out the ornaments, you can make it as bland and professional as you want later!"

"Fuck, fine," he dropped down to a crouch, hissing lightly as the breath was forced out of his lungs. Lucy thwacked the back of his head as she followed in suit. "You're going to break your ribs again! Remember what the doctor said?"

"Last I checked, I was the doctor here, you're still the starving student."

"Thought you weren't that kind of doctor?"

"Don't get cheeky with me, brat," Erik held out an angel figurine towards her. "For the topper?"

"Angels are so outdated and freaky," Lucy's fingers danced over the small shelf of toppers, finding one hidden behind two angel statues. "This one!"

"A star? That's just cliché as fuck."

"It's a pretty star," she said, only half-hearted in her earnestness. The star really was beautiful. With ten thin points, each capped with a small glass ball, it differed from the traditional five-pointer. The points alternated gold and red, with the glitter that sprinkled it being the opposite. It reminded her of a dress she once wore to a Christmas ball as a young girl.

Everybody had called her a princess that night.

Everybody including her proposed fiancé.

"We'll get it," Erik's soft voice brought her out of her musings. She cleared her throat, blinking back another onslaught of tears. "Thought the glitter would stick around your floors for a couple millenia?"

"Not if I set up a plastic sheet under the tree. We could have a fucking rave in there and my floor would be safe, so..." he held out his hand. "Gimmie."

"Hell no, I'm paying for this!" she protested as he snatched it, careful not to break off any of the points as he stood with that and the box. "You're living off ramen and by the looks of your kitchen, you've not eaten in a while. Leave the extra spending to me and save up for something that won't result in sodium poisoning."

"I've not died yet, have I?" she sighed as they walked up to the counter with their purchases. Erik paused and grabbed a woolen scarf in the most garish shade of pink she had ever laid eyed upon and added it to the pile. "What?" he said defensively at her look. "How are you supposed to look after me if you're the one with pneumonia?"

"Will that be all, dears?" the kindly old man behind the counter interrupted them, a small smile on his lips.

"Yes," they both said at once. "Thank you," Lucy tacked on, poking Erik in the side. "Don't be rude."

"How is that rude, you insane-ugh, never mind," he grumbled, pulling out his wallet and flipping it open. "Do you take debit?"

"The machine broke," the man said apologetically. Erik shrugged. "Fine. How much?"

"Thirty dollars and forty-nine cents," he pulled out two twenties and slid it across the counter. "Keep the change."

One part of Lucy wanted to shake him for treating ten dollars like it was nothing. That was at least thirty packs of maggie she could've bought at the local convenience store gone down the drain. Another part casually reminded her that he was loaded and could clearly afford a missing ten.

"Before you go," the old man stopped them, digging under the counter for something. "I noticed you two were having a little ornament trouble. Not unusual when a fresh-faced couple like yourself is doing something like this for the first time, but..."

Lucy's first instinct was to turn firetruck red. Couple? Her and Erik? She opened her mouth to protest, but found that no words would leave her mouth. Erik looked just as flabbergasted as she did, but did nothing to stop the old man from his shpeel.

"It's certainly the first time I've seen a couple so right," the shop owner placed two ornaments on the counter. The white birds were clicked together, and Lucy stared at them in awe. The craftmanship was unparalleled. This had been handmade. She had never seen such a level of intricate carving in regular store bought items in her life.

"Turtle doves," she heard Erik say. "These are beautiful. Where did you get them?"

"My wife used to love making these little figurines. Bless her soul, she would waste away days in the workshop building these things. Didn't ever understood why she liked turtle doves so much, but she told me she would never sell a set to anyone she didn't think was deserving of it. Never went to any of those lust-crazed teens. This is my last set, and I know she'd want you to have one."

Immediately, Lucy began to protest. "We couldn't! We're not even-"

"They're far too precious for us to-"

"I won't hear a no," the old man said firmly. "They're yours. What will I do with 'em? I have my own set on my tree. First ones Marion ever made."

"Thanks," Erik said, surprising Lucy. She had expected him to flat out leave without the ornaments, but instead, his lips were curved ever so slightly, and hers followed in suit. He looked nice like that. Smiling.

She hoped to see it more often.

* * *

"Done!" Lucy exhaled heavily, stepping back to examine their work. "It's amazing!"

"Of course it is, I helped," Erik held out a mug of coffee towards her, sipping at his own. She gagged as the bitter liquid hit her tongue. "Coffee? Really? Couldn't be normal and make hot chocolate?"

"Don't have any, but feel free to buy some and help yourself," he made his way over to his sofa and sat down, propping his feet up on the coffee table and flipping through a nearby file. Lucy almost snorted when she saw that the socks were patterned with little reindeer.

"Where are the turtle doves?" she asked.

"Table. Wasn't sure where to put them," he mumbled as he turned the page slowly. "Go nuts."

Lucy rolled her eyes and picked up the glass figurines gingerly. There wasn't much space available on the tree, but she wasn't above picking away some ornaments to make room for these ones. They were far too rare and meaningful to ignore. Finally, she opted to loop them through a free branch in the middle of the tree, tugging off a drummer beneath to make room for it. It seemed inherently wrong to separate them.

"Looks great. Don't touch it or you'll fuck it up," he called from the sofa. Lucy scoffed. "Ass."

"You aren't denying it."

"Again. Ass."

"Whatever, princess," they both froze as the word was dropped. Lucy bit back the urge to storm out. He didn't know. She couldn't fault him for using it again in casual conversation. She hadn't explained why she hated being called that in the first place.

"You like Discovery?" he asked suddenly.

Lucy knew an offer to drop the matter without question when she saw it.

"Sure. Why?"

"They're running a documentary on feral and isolate children, according to the guide," he held out the remote to her in invitation. "Little miss psychology interested?"

"We could always just watch Magnolia's Funniest Home Videos," she pointed out, curling up on his sofa. She could see him staring at her out of the corner of her eye, and did her best to hide her shiver. "Sounds like a plan."

Lucy switched the channel and leaned back, jolting up when she felt a heavy fabric being thrown at her. "The heating goes bust around this time of day when the junkies tax it out. Give it an hour or two."

"What about you?" Lucy asked as she cocooned herself in the afghan. Erik wiggled his toes pointedly. "These cost me ten bucks, and they're the warmest things I've ever owned. I'm also in about three layers, both top and bottom."

"You're a snake," she yawned sleepily. The exhaustion of the week was finally catching up to her. With the stress of her group project effectively neutralized, she had nothing to stay up to fret about. Perhaps she would close her eyes for a moment, just to let that sink in.

Lucy barely registered her feet being pulled so she didn't lay at an awkward angle on the armrest, and she couldn't muster the energy to open her eyes to watch as Erik adjusted her blanket. An extra five minutes wouldn't do her any harm.

"...deprived idiot," she heard him whisper.

"Not sleep...'prive..." she moaned. "Jus...five min...s..."

She was so warm, after all.


	3. The Haunting of the Three Hens

"Thank you so much for this, Lucy," Bisca Connell smiled gratefully.

"Oh, not a problem at all! I'm so glad I can help," Lucy grinned, shifting the strap of the overnight bag on her shoulder. Behind Bisca, Alzack Connell cooed at his adorable five-year-old, Asuka, spouting promises of an early arrival from their business trip.

"Again, we have a list of all the numbers you need tacked onto the fridge, and there's a pre-loaded, disposable credit card on the counter in case you two want to order something extra," Bisca said. Snapping her fingers, she added, "Oh! And Asuka is allergic to pineapples, so no matter how pouty she gets, no pineapples. On anything. If she does manage to sneak a bite or two somehow, there's anti-allergens in the medicine cabinet. Also-"

"Bed time is nine sharp, avoid watching anything other than the Toon Channel, Asuka can't sleep without her monster truck, and she needs a glass of cold milk prior to sleeping," Lucy recited. Bisca visibly deflated with relief, reaching out to squeeze the blonde's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, it's just…we don't leave her alone too often and, well…"

"You worry. It's perfectly natural," Lucy said, tilting to the side to wave at her charge for the next two days. "And Asuka is a sweetheart. I'm positive she'll be no trouble at all."

"Alright. Again, thank you so much for doing this on such short notice. Mira told us you'd be okay to babysit," Alzack approached the duo with Asuka on his shoulders. Asuka was busy braiding various strand of her father's hair, using strands to knot the bottom.

"I totally am. Also, I needed a break from my project. My group members need to learn to work on their own," Lucy said. Bisca sighed loudly, giving Alzack a soft look. "You remember out first group project?"

"The one where you broke Tyler Manning's nose for daring to ask you to his portion of the work?" Alzack smiled fondly at his wife. "I remember it vividly."

Lucy shivered. So this was the legendary Moulin Rouge. She didn't seem nearly as terrifying as the rumours in Crocus U made her out to be. Although, the aura she gave off did have a subtle tinge of something akin to 'danger, fuck off'. Shaking her head, Lucy held her arms out for Asuka, who gleefully scrambled off her father and into Lucy's comfortable embrace. "We'll be just fine, won't we?"

"Yeah, mommy! It'll be amazing! Lucy-nee and I can play Hungry Hippos!" Asuka exclaimed. Bisca giggled, leaning over to plant a wet kiss on her daughter's cheek. "Yes, you can, dear! Alright, now-Alzack? Alzack, stop crying."

"Asukaaaaaaaa! I'm going to miss you so much!"

"We'll be gone for two days, darling."

* * *

"So, what do you want to do, Asuka?" Lucy asked as the two settled down in the living room. The blonde eyed the room with envy. It was easily the size of half her apartment, and three times as neat. The fact that the sofa's springs didn't dig into her ass when she sat down was reason enough for her to make a mental note to thank Mira for suggesting her as babysitter.

"Do you wanna hear a story?" Asuka asked.

"Sure!" Lucy smiled, curling up on the sofa. Asuka's imagination was legendary, and her stories were often retold during group meetings, though it tended to end up like a game of telephone and half the information was forgotten and made up. That added to the fun of it all, however, so nobody really minded not hearing it from the horse's mouth.

"This neighbourhood is haunted," the little girl whispered conspiratorially. Lucy stiffened, resisting the urge to jump up and hide away in a closet with a chainsaw like she had done last year during Halloween. She hated scary stories. Loathed them with such a vengeance that it had become an unspoken rule not to start one with her near unless somebody was willing to be her 'squeeze-hand-until-broken' sacrifice.

How scary could it be, though? Asuka was five, Lucy reasoned, the scariest story she could probably tell was the ghost in the trunk in the woods story, and every kindergartener knew that one. Still, she grabbed a pillow and held it close to her chest. Laxus wasn't around for her to latch on to, after all.

"Oh? How so?"

"It only started this week, but every night, I hear scary croaking noises right around bedtime! They sound like this," Asuka tilted her head back and opened her mouth, letting loose a guttural croak that had Lucy's eyes twitching violently. It sounded like something straight out of the Grudge trilogy, complete with the creepy little girl on the couch. The Grudge was right up there with Mirrors in terms of 'nope, fuck that shit' movies she had been forced to watch. To this day, she still had to check under the covers for demonic little children, and she couldn't look into a bathroom mirror for longer than a minute, which was a pain in the ass when she needed to apply liquiliner.

"And then?" but Lucy was an author at heart and needed to know how the story ended. It was the only reason she had bothered with the Twilight Saga. No matter how many red pens she had wasted editing the many glaring errors.

"I asked the other kids, and they told me they heard it, too! Apparently, there was a robber who got beat up by Mr Vijeeter down the street for trying to break in, but his auntie is a magician who cursed this whole area with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future!" Asuka bobbed her head seriously.

Lucy felt her chest lighten in relief. So the whole story was just some twist on the classic 'A Christmas Carol'. Children didn't care much for the deep thought and intricate details of the original, so they needed to spice it up. She could understand that. It was the natural evolution of literature. Stories needed to adapt to the time and age group to appeal to everybody.

"Can I tell you a secret about the ghosts?" Lucy whispered conspiratorially, and bit back a smile as Asuka perked up and scrambled forward, bringing her little ear close to Lucy's mouth. "The ghosts only haunt those who don't believe in Christmas. Do you believe?"

"Yes!" Asuka declared, nodding her head furiously. Her brown eyes were wide and her mouth was set in a stubborn line as she continued, "I believe in Christmas, and Santa, and the elves and all of Santa's reindeer, and I believe that being good all year will get me lots of presents 'cause that's what mama told me!"

"Well then, you have absolutely nothing to worry about!" Lucy clapped her hands together. "Now. How about we get some dinner ready and watch a movie before bed?"

Asuka jumped off the sofa, dashing over to the TV cabinet and pulling out a small DVD case. "Can we watch Frosty?"

"I think that can be arranged," Lucy grinned, holding out her hand to escort her charge to the kitchen.

* * *

Putting Asuka to bed was a fairly easy task. All she needed was cold milk and a small bedtime story (Lucy had selected Sleeping Beauty this evening), and she was off into the land of dreams and lollypops, leaving Lucy with more than enough time to get some work done for her classes.

"Thesis time..." she yawned, reaching for her bottle of VitaminWater. Spark would definitely keep her awake long enough to come up with a thesis. Idly, Lucy turned the bottle upside down to read the description on the side. That was the thing she liked most about the drink-it was unique in its presentation.

Her attention was quickly diverted as her phone buzzed loudly on the table. Unlocking the screen, Lucy opened the text and smiled as the contact name popped up.

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**Hope you're still awake b/c you have a thesis to finish.**

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**And you better not be mixing vodka and VitaminWater tg again**

Rolling her eyes, she tapped out a quick reply.

**To: Dr Viv-ass**

**Yes, Professor, I'm awake. No, Doctor, I'm not.**

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**The snark is unneeded, Miss Heartfilia. If this were high school, I'd assign you detention.**

In that moment, which Lucy would forever look back and cringe upon, Lucy's inner Cana awoke and took over.

Inner Cana was what Lucy affectionately dubbed her impulsive side. Almost as wild and sassy as her best friend, inner Cana would pop up at the most inopportune of times (like now) and say or do things so scandalous (like she was about to do) that it would put the real life Cana to mild shame (though this seemed well within real life Cana's boundaries).

**To: Dr Viv-ass**

**Well, let's say you can still put me in detention, right now...how would you punish me ;)**

Mortification didn't even begin to cover what Lucy was feeling at the present moment, but before she could send a hasty 'just kidding' with as many laughing emojis as permitted by her character limit, a soft croak caught her attention.

Blinking twice, the blonde bent down to her laptop and listened to the fan whirring in silence for the next minute to make sure it wasn't dying on her. Licking her suddenly dry lips, Lucy shut the screen and stood up, tip-toeing around the main floor to find the source of the noise.

"There's no way it's actually a ghost," she mumbled to herself as she inspected the kitchen. The stove was off, as we're the oven and the exhaust. The cabinets were secure, so it couldn't have been them, and all dishes were neatly put away. "I mean, Asuka told me that those were based off A Christmas Carol! Come on, Lucy, you're an adult woman-"

A loud groan and unearthly sqwack had her squeaking and dropping to a crouch in the kitchen. Fuck her earlier bravery, Lucy was horrible when it came to ghost stories, no matter how poorly executed they were. Normally, she would've resigned herself to sleeping on the sofa with a baseball bat, but there was Asuka to think about. She needed to stay calm so Asuka could stay calm. There was no need to incite unnecessary panic, after all.

A croak, louder this time, from above, had Lucy backing into a corner and pressing the back of her head into the wooden cabinets forcefully enough to distract her from the noise. She didn't know whether to cry out in fear or shame. She was a grown woman who specialized in the study of the human mind; she of all people should have had the logic to work through her fear, but she couldn't even muster the courage to stand up. Her legs felt like jelly and her hands were clammy enough to work up a layer of sweat on her phone screen, which displayed a new text from Erik-

"Erik," she breathed. Before she could think it through, she had pressed dial and brought the phone up to her ear, breathing slowly in an attempt to calm herself before she spoke.

"Heartfilia," Erik's smooth baritone filtered through the speaker. Immediately, a wave of security swept over her. Illogical, a small voice in het head mused, but for some reason, he was a great source of comfort to her. "I don't suppose you have a reason-"

"Could you come here?" Lucy blurted out. Silence answered her, punctuated by the occasional soft exhale from both parties. Clearing her throat, she said, "C-could you just...come, please? K-keep me company? I...I can explain just...please?"

"Yeah," he replied, something close to curiousity colouring his tone. "Is everything okay?"

"I...I don't know. Just...hurry?" Lucy asked meekly.

"On my way," Erik promised. Lucy exhaled shakily, a good deal of tension escaping her body. He was on his way. He would be able to talk sense to her. He had the more developed empirical mind, and he seemed to harbour no significant fear for the supernatural (though, knowing him, he probably scoffed openly at those who did). Erik would know what to do.

"I'll be waiting," Lucy said, hanging up and locking her phone. Squeezing her eyes shut to gather her wits about her, the blonde focused on creating the quickest route from her current position to the sofa, where she would probably wait until her saviour in the form of a disgruntled scientist arrived. It was at times like these where Lucy regretted doubting her math teachers when they said math would be useful in day to day life (though she had no idea how to calculate the slope of the line between herself and the living room...she was supposed to use that one, right?).

Nodding sharply to herself, she counted to ten and bolted up and put of the kitchen. Her socks skidded across the sleek floor, and she nearly collided with the wall in her haste to jump over the back of the sofa and land amongst the fluffy cushions. Squeaking in alarm, Lucy bit back a howl of pain as she clipped her hip against a particularly hard corner of the sofa as she vaulted over it. That would certainly bruise...

"Now we wait..." she mumbled, flinching as she heard another croak. She groaned in tandem with whatever unholy spirit haunted the house, and slammed a pillow over her head, settling in for what was probably going to be the longest wait of her life.

* * *

When the doorbell rang, Lucy leapt off the sofa and slid across the hardwood floor to the door. Within moments, it was swung wide open to reveal a rather surprised looking Erik. Lucy took one look at his barely covered form before dragging him in the house and brushing off the snow that had piled up on his shoulders.

"What the hell are you wearing?" Lucy scolded, holding him out at arms length. His sleeveless muscle shirt paired with sweatpants emblazoned with the Crocus U crest on one leg did very little to keep him protected from the elements. Erik rolled his eye, kicking off his boots and shuffling past her to the living room.

"Relax. I ran here," at her strangled screech of horror, Erik snickered. "Kidding. I caught a cab. It's just snowing really hard outside."

"You could get sick!" Lucy said, joining him by the fireplace. A pang of guilt started in her chest when she caught the barely noticeable tremor to his form. It was freezing, nearing twelve in the morning, and she had forced him up to a strange location because a five-year-old's ghost story had spooked her. "You've already got the concussion and ribs to worry about."

"Since when do I give a fuck?" he said as his eye scanned the photographs lined on the mantle. "So. What got you so freaked you needed to call?"

Lucy bit her lip, glancing down at her feet shyly. It seemed so stupid now. She had always been a jumpy person. Horror movies were ruined by her constant whimpering, and for hours after, she could be found in a terrified heap in a corner, glaring at shadows as if a monster were to leap out and claw out her throat. "N-nothing…it's just…this is gonna sound so stupid...Asuka was telling me about some alleged haunting in the neighbourhood, and I heard some noises..."

"You are such a fucking kid some times," Erik grumbled, striding over to the sofa and plopping down. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table and yawned. "No point in me going back, you'll just end up calling me again."

Lucy winced, settling down beside him. She longed to inch over just a little closer so she could feel the warmth his body was emitting. Though she had berated him for his poor clothing choice, she was hardly any better, what with her shorts and tank top combo. "Sorry. I just got freaked out and you were the first person to come to mind."

"I'm flattered," he said in a flat tone. Lucy would have thought he was being sarcastic had it not been for the red flush to his ears. He wasn't kidding. Shaking her head (and along with it passing thoughts of how cute he looked when embarrassed), Lucy asked, "So what were you up to before I called?"

"Preparing for a presentation at your school," he said. "I'm talking to one of the law classes about the use of science in the courtroom."

"When's this?"

Her need to know had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she would put in an effort to look nice that day.

"Monday," Erik stretched out. Lucy watched with no small amount of shame as his shirt rode up, exposing what had to be the neatest happy trail she had seen in her life. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she traced the fine lines of his v-cut, visualizing what lay hidden just beneath the hem of his sweatpants. She had been with her fair share of men, but none of them were close to as sculpted as he was.

"Lucy-nee?" Asuka whispered as she hobbled into the living room. "I'm hearing funny noises."

Lucy's brow furrowed as she made a shushing motion to both people in the room. Closing her eyes, she focused her attention to her hearing, tilting her head up and listening closely. At first, there was nothing but the sharp whistle of the wind, but the longer she listened, the clearer the sound became. A soft croak mixed with the louder whistles, occasionally overlapped by more croaks.

"That's the noise!" Lucy hissed. Erik sat up attentively, listening as well. "Doesn't sound like it's h-"

Lucy elbowed him sharply, making sure to avoid his injured ribs. Catching her warning look and the clearly scared little girl's watery gaze, he amended, "It doesn't sound like it's here. In the house. Outside, maybe."

"Can I sleep here?" Asuka asked. "I'll go to bed real quick, I promise."

"Sure, honey, I'll just grab a blanket-you already brought one? Okay, c'mon," Lucy scooted closer to Erik, patting the space next to her. Asuka trotted over, quickly scrambling up and cuddling close to her babysitter. Her tired eyes flicked up to stare at Erik, who met her gaze evenly. "Who're you?"

"I'm Cobra," he replied. "Lucy's friend."

"Cobra? Like a snake?" Asuka tilted her head. "Why would your mommy and daddy name you after a snake?"

"Who says I'm not a snake?" he challenged. "Maybe I'm just shapeshifting."

Lucy bit her lip harshly to avoid grinning like a maniac as the two stared each other down. Never in a million years would she have ever imagined that she would live to bear witness to her surly neighbour talking to a five year old with all the teasing nature of a caregiver. Though he wasn't smiling and his face hadn't softened any, she could see a little twinkle of mischief in his eye. It was kind of cute.

"Then if you're a snake, you can keep us safe from the ghosts," Asuka said.

"The...ghosts," he repeated.

"Of Christmas Past, Present, and Future," Lucy whispered over the girls head. Erik's eye widened marginally in understanding before it melted to vague annoyance. "You called me here because A Christmas Carol freaked you out? You of all people should know what the ghosts in the story were symbols of. And you of all people should know that ghosts don't exist. The noises are probably just the wind circulating between the gaps in the houses and creating a-"

A sharp sqwack interrupted the beginning of the mother of all lectures, and Lucy felt her stomach drop. That was in no way human or made by the wind. Asuka merely snuggled in deeper next to Lucy while the two adults exchanged looks of trepidation.

"Okay," the toxicologist muttered. "Not human, and not the wind. I'm not crying ghost, but-"

"The devil himself?" Lucy offered, hysteria edging at her voice. "Coming to drag us to hell for our copious sins?"

"I doubt you're old enough to have racked up enough sins to make it to limbo let alone the first ring. Me, on the other hand, I'm right down there in ring number nine."

Lucy scowled. The age thing had been funny at first, but now it was starting to bother her. Did he really just see her as some kid? She was twenty-one for crying out loud. He was only, what, twenty-seven? Six years older than her, and yet the way he kept bringing it up made it seem like it was sixty. She didn't want to be seen as some kid. She wanted to be seen as an adult, mature enough to be an equal in his eyes.

Lucy blinked as she realized that her companion was nowhere to be found in the living room. He must have gone off to investigate the source of the sound while she was lost in her musings. Looking down, her heart melted as she saw Asuka snore softly, opening and closing her mouth softly as if sucking at a bottle. The girl was just too adorable for her to handle! Idly, Lucy wondered what her own child would look like at that age. Brown eyes, probably, dark skin, maybe maroon hair...

The blonde slapped her hands to her cheeks quickly, hoping to will away her furious blush. Had she just visualized hers and Erik's kid? She'd only known him a few weeks! This was all moving far too quickly for her to process. She knew that simple physical attraction was normal, even if two people had known each other for less than a few hours, but this? This was...abnormal. She couldn't deny she was attracted to him, but that she was imagining their children? That she was going to lie about till her ancestors rolled themselves another six feet under.

"So," Erik dropped down beside her once more, causing her to start. "There doesn't seem to be anybody in the house, but I double-checked all the windows just in case. You know they have a gun cabinet here?"

"Yeah, Bisca and Alzack are retired army snipers. They design and develop guns for the military now, that's why they're gone for the weekend. They've been invited to a conference to promote their latest product," Lucy explained.

"Interesting," Erik said.

A heavy silence fell over the two. It wasn't awkward, but it was definitely something Lucy had no problems ignoring in the future. After several moments of this, Lucy yawned. Blinking back tears of exhaustion, she realized that it was close to 1:40 in the morning and she was nowhere near done her work.

"Sleep."

"Huh?"

"Don't do your work, it's not worth it if you can barely keep your eyes open," Erik said. He stretched his foot out and pushed the screen of her laptop down, staying in his slouched position after.

"Fine," inner Cana took over and Lucy found herself shifting Asuka so she lay on her lap, leaving Lucy with enough room to shift over and snuggle into his side. Her head rested against his shoulder, which was a somewhat uncomfortable place to rest as the bone dug into the side of her head. The heat he gave off made up for it.

Lucy squeaked when he raised his arm and draped it across her shoulders, drawing her into a much more comfortable position against his chest. She couldn't help but sniff his shirt. He smelt of a strong cleaning agent she couldn't identify, and while it normally would have bothered her nose she found it was tolerable.

"Sleep," he said again, and she felt a thrum of something hot sweep through her at the rumble of his voice through his chest. Gradually, the slow rise and fall of his chest and the steady beat of his heart lulled her into a relaxed enough state that she could drift off into blissful sleep.

* * *

Lucy awoke with a rather pressing concern.

One that was directly on top of her rather full bladder.

On one hand, Asuka looked as comfortable as anything curled up on her lap, and Lucy was loathe to disturb the little girl's sleep. On the other hand, she was going to pee on the sofa if she didn't make it to the bathroom within the next minute. After a whole five seconds of waffling between her options, Lucy stood up and placed Asuka on the sofa. She bit back a bark of laughter as the five year old immediately moved on to the next heat source; namely, Erik's lap.

Deciding to take a photo when she was relieved, Lucy scampered to the upstairs bathroom. If there was one thing she hated about this week the most, it was the fact that she was on her period. The constant need to urinate was the bane of her existence. That and the cramps. God, her cramps were the stuff of nightmares.

After changing her pad and cleaning up, Lucy strolled back down the hall to the stairs at a leisurely pace. Lethargy weighed heavy on her bones and contributed to her sluggish movements. She just wanted to close her eyes and drift off right there and then. It was so warm upstairs...

Croak.

Lucy froze.

Croak.

There it was again.

Swallowing thickly, she turned her head towards Asuka's bedroom. The door was ajar, and Lucy couldn't help but feel like she'd seen this somewhere before...

Right. That one horror movie about the box with weird objects in it and the random Polish poem.

"If moths come flying out of the room, I'm launching myself down the stairs," Lucy mumbled to herself. Steeling herself, she marched right up to the door and pushed it open. Spying a bat by the door, she picked it up and held it level to her head as she continued forth. Asuka's room was decorated beautifully, with the canopy bed as the focal point. The curtains were down, obscuring the objects on the bed.

"Alrighty then," Lucy looked at the window and was relieved to see that it was firmly shut. No home intruders through there.

Croak.

This time, the noise was louder. Much louder. As in multiple people in the room kind of louder.

God, she hated this week.

Turning around with the speed and grace of a snail, Lucy swore her heart and stomach switched places as she spotted the mother of all demonic silhouettes rising find behind the canopy curtains. Her bat dropped with her heart and she screamed so loud she was amazed that the windows didn't shatter from the impact.

It was huge. Like. Ten to the power of five multiplied by infinity squared huge. That might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but the point was, it was huge. It seemed like three lumps of something with two little wings from the topmost lump. Each of the blobs moved and fluttered, and they sqwacked and balked at her cry.

And then proceeded to split into three bodies.

"Lucy!" Erik burst in, a meat cleaver in one hand and Asuka in the other. The little girl screamed, thrashing until the toxicologist dropped her, and she ran to Lucy, who grabbed her and kept screaming.

"What the-holy fuck!" Erik swore. While on any other day she would've lectured him for his language in front of Asuka, she found that there really was no other way to properly express the sheer amount of 'what the fuck' that was going on.

"Kill it!" Lucy screeched.

"Make it go away!" Asuka wailed.

"Will you both shut the fuck up so I can hear myself think?!" Erik yelled.

"Erik! I let it go the first time because it was warranted, but there is a child in the room! Watch your language!"

"There is a literal demon in the bed and you're freaking out over my language?"

"Do you have any idea what'll happen to me if she says the f-word around her parents? They'll round up their army buddies and I'll end up as target practice for their latest guns!"

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

"You said it again! Can't you replace it with something else? Like strawberry!"

"I swear to f-strawberry God, once this is over I'm gonna drag your strawberry donkey to the psychiatrist's to get your head checked. What kind of normal human being gives strawberry lectures on language when Satan's left ballsack is trying to sing the opening theme to The Lion King with its strawberry tonsils ripped out?"

Lucy opened and closed her mouth like a fish as she watched him storm up to the canopy and rip back the curtains. Asuka's screams grew to sound-barrier breaking proportions, and petered off with a 'hah' as the demon was revealed.

Three massive hens leapt off the bed and out the door, leaving behind a trail of feathers and pink glitter in their wake. The trio blinked and stared at the door for a long minute before turning back to the bed to take in the sight of an alarmingly large canister of pink glitter open upon the sheets.

"...I'm not high, right?" Erik pointed to the door with the meat cleaver. "You...you saw the chickens."

"Hens," Lucy corrected faintly. "Yeah. I...saw the hens..."

"Do we eat 'em?" Asuka asked curiously. "They're chickens, right?"

"...I'm gonna go call Animal Control," Erik said.

"I'm going to go and change my underwear. And pants. And maybe also bathe. And find painkillers with a high enough dosage to render me unconscious for more than six hours so I can take this in."

* * *

Bisca and Alzack showed up just as the Animal Control van pulled put of the driveway.

"What happened?" Bisca asked Lucy as Alzack held on to his daughter, the both of them sobbing animatedly.

"There were three chickens in your house," Lucy said simply. "I don't know how they got there, but they did."

"Vents," Erik said as he joined her. "They got in through the vents. The animal control guy told me that they'd been sneaking into different houses on this block for a while now. All this Christmas food prep was getting them hungry."

"Who are you?" Bisca asked. Erik held out his hand as he said, "Dr Erik Vivas."

"I called him over when I heard the hens making noises," Lucy interjected. "I'm really sorry, but he's one of the only people that came to mind at the time."

"It's fine, Lucy," Bisca smiled at her. "I'm just glad that everybody is all right."

"What are you doing home so early?"

"Alzack," Bisca shot her husband a fond, if not exasperated, look. "Got separation anxiety from his little girl. We told the directors fuck it, we were coming home and that the product was pretty self explanatory. Worse comes to worse, the PowerPoint had detailed notes to examine plus pictures."

"So they can swear around the kid but I can't?" Erik muttered.

"Thank you so much, Lucy," Alzack walked up to them with Asuka in his arms. His suit was appropriately a mess, but he smiled brightly enough to keep them from paying too much attention. "We'll send you the rest of the payment in the mail. The whole thing. For dealing with the chickens."

"You don't need to-" Lucy began to protest. Erik's hand at the small of her back had her trailing off. "Thank you," he said in her place. "I'll take her home. Whatever you have of hers inside can be sent to her apartment."

After goodbyes were exchanged (Asuka had promptly fallen asleep), Lucy found herself strolling casually down the snowy streets with her grouchy neighbour at 4 in the morning.

"You were pretty brave today," Lucy teased, shoving him gently. "Bursting in with that knife."

"I heard you scream, what was I supposed to do, stare a wall till you stopped?"

"Maybe."

He scoffed.

Lucy stopped them under the dull light of a street lamp, shuffling her feet awkwardly. She ducked her head into the scarf he had purchased her the day they met, hoping to avoid his piercing gaze. Even with one eye the guy was intimidating. "Thank you. You were so much help this evening. I don't know if I could have..."

"It's fine," he grumbled. The blonde wasn't sure if the red on his cheeks was due to the cold or his own embarrassment. "Anybody could've done it."

Emboldened, Lucy marched over, threw her arms over his neck and kissed his cheek. His skin was colder than her dry lips, and when she pulled back she was amazed to see his face nearly three shades of red darker than before.

"You did a great job. Best protector ever," she smiled up at him affectionately. She dropped her arms from his neck to his arm, holding it captive to her person. Erik gave her a confused look as she said, "It's four in the morning and it's snowing. My very own Sleepless in Seattle."

Erik snorted, but let her hold onto his arm like it was a lifeboat on the Titanic.

"Hey, Bright Eyes?" he said as they crossed the street. "You remember how you asked how I'd punish you if it came down to that?" Lucy blushed deeply but nodded. She was hoping he would forget it, but alas.

"I would strawberry you up so hard you'd not be able to see straight for the weekend."

"Erik!"

"What?" he smirked. "I just meant I'd screw with your head. Did you think I meant...? Lucy's having impure thoughts!"

"You asshole!" she complained, stomping her foot and dropping his arm to cross hers over her chest. "You knew full well the implications of your words! You're just being an ass on purpose!"

"Donkey, Bright Eyes. There are children present," he mocked. Lucy's pout deepened and she stared at her boots fixedly. She squeaked when she felt her scarf unwind and one end be tugged up. Lucy's mouth popped open when she saw Erik wrapping one end of the scarf around his neck while adjusting hers with his other hand. At her look, he gave her a defensive glare. "What? It's cold!"

Lucy shook her head and wrapped her arms around his torso from the side. She refused to look into his eyes as she tugged him forward. "S-stupid Erik. We should hurry before you get sick."

"A little late for that," she thought she heard him huff, but that was quickly erased from her mind as his arm fell over her shoulders as they braved the cold streets. Lucy made sure to tighten her grip on his waist as she crossed the road.

He was so very warm, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own fairy tail etc etc


	4. Four Missed Calls

_Missed Call from_ _ **Erza Scarlet (cell)**_ _,_   _4:47 AM_

_Missed Call from_ _**Erza Scarlet (cell)** _ _, 4:50 AM_

_Message from_ _ **Erza Scarlet (cell)**_ _, 4:51 AM_ _ **:**_   _Lucy, I have called…_

_Message from_ _**Erza Scarlet (cell)** _ _, 4:53 AM: It is an emerge..._

_Missed call from_ _**Erza Scarlet (cell)** _ _, 4:55 AM_

_Missed call from_ _**Erza Scarlet (cell)** _ _, 5:00 AM_

Two hours.

It had been  _two hours_ since Erza's missed calls. In those precious hours that drew the hazy line between the unholiest hours of the morning and the hours at which most self-respecting adults woke up to go be contributing members of society, Lucy's fate had been drawn over her sleeping body like a blanket.

Erza was doing to draw and quarter her with a blunt Swiss Army Knife, beat her itty bitty pieces with a meat tenderizer, marinate her in vodka and pork marinade, slow cook her over a flaming pit of coals, and then feed her to the vultures in Desierto's famous Wayback Sahara.

As Lucy hastily grabbed her keys and wallet and jogged down the stairs to the parking garage, she searched up the fines for breaking the speed limit. 20 kilometers per hour over was about a $100, give or take a kilometer. If she hit 120 KPH on the highway she could  _probably_ get away with it by reason of going with the flow of traffic. She glanced down at her pink flip-flops; now  _those_ she couldn't explain away. The legal ramifications were likely equivalent to the original speeding ticket, so she filed away that thought and headed for her Camry. Besides, she shuddered, jail time and massive fines were  _preferable_ to Erza's wrath.

Lucy slid into the driver's seat and stuck the key in the ignition, twisting it.

Nothing happened.

A chill that rivaled that of the stone parking garage settled just below her ribs, curling like smoke and filling the crevices between them and her lungs. She twisted the key desperately, nearly bending the metal in her desperation to  _start the fucking stupid ass car, holy shit this could not be happening right now_. Her hand dropped to the seat just as her head hit the steering wheel.

This was it. This was how she died. Her coffin was her car and she would rest forever as a reminder to visit the auto shop for check-ups  _before_ stupid shit like this happened.

Lucy screamed when something started rapping against her window. It was just like those stupid urban legends Natsu would tell them when they were having sleepovers in the fifth grade, about that hook-handed man and the stalled car. She had already prepared herself for her guts being spilled, but the hook-man was  _not_ the way she had intended to go.

"Shut  _up_! Fucks sake, you'll end up breaking the sound barrier if you get any louder!"

Erik lowered his hands from where they were pressed up against his ears once she calmed down and lowered the window. Ignoring the goosebumps that burst across her unprotected flesh (why was it that they always met when she was in pyjamas and he was bundled to the nines?), Lucy offered a weak smile and waved.

"You'd think you'd learn from last time." His eye roved over her attire - or lack thereof - and offered her his thermos of coffee. Lucy moaned as the wonderful, glorious heat of the drink spread through her body, chasing the heat away for the time being. This was better than a hot shower. Better than a deep tissue massage. Both of which she could  _really_  go for right now.

"I'm fucked," she said bluntly. "My friend called from a city over saying it was an emergency. My car is broken. She's gonna  _kill me_. I thought you were the hook man. I have an assignment due. I have  _an exam in a few days_. I think my toes are frostbitten. I was gonna break the speed limit. I-"

"Have had a shit day," Erik interrupted. "Can't help you with the exam or your poor dress sense, but the car and the toes are up my alley."

Lucy nearly broke her door down in her rush to exit the vehicle, and immediately regretted leaving the marginally warmer cloth seat of her car. How was it possible that it was  _colder_? How was it possible she was even  _feeling_ the change in temperature? There had to be a cut off point at which her nerves decided to pack up and go on vacation to Prague because it was just impossible to feel any colder. Judging by her tooth-shattering, shiver induced chattering, that point would be reached soon. Very soon. What was it Robert Frost had said?  _I think I know of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice_? Freezing to death had to be a  _mercy_ compared to Erza. At least she would be in one piece.

"You're so impossibly stupid I'm losing brain cells," Erik said, shrugging off his thick coat. "Don't you  _dare_ say no. If you freeze to death in my car, I'm either gonna ship you off to a cryogenics lab or to the cadaver lab at Crocus U."

"I could kiss you right now," Lucy sighed, shoving her frozen hands into the deep pockets. There were an assortment of goodies within: the right pocket contained a multitude of scrap paper, a stubby pencil, what felt like three small pieces of unchewed gum, and a small calculator, and the left pocket had his cell phone in it. She wondered if he had changed his password yet, or if he had left it the same so she could sneak in and play Candy Crush in the car.

"Thanks, but I'd rather my lips not be bitten off." Erik grabbed her elbow and steered her towards an ancient looking Honda Ridgeline. Lucy raised an eyebrow. "Wait, you have one eye. How do you have a license?"

The answering smile was positively vicious. "I'm just  _that_ good of a driver."

* * *

"You're a horrible liar," Lucy said calmly. "And once I can see the world in one shape again, I'll kill you."

"Gee, you're welcome, Lucy," he snarked, opening her door for her and helping her out. She almost tripped trying to shuffle to the side, but his tight grip kept her steady.

"Okay, so we need to go...uh…" Her brown eyes surveyed the four identical apartment complexes before her. Whose brilliant architectural skills had figured  _this_ was a good idea? Lucy scrolled through her texts with Erza, trying to find her address. When that pulled out nothing, she hit up her notes and groaned when that, too, provided jack-squat.

"You don't even know her address?" Erik's disbelief was palpable. "Holy  _shit_ you are ten kinds of stupid today. Did you at least plan a  _little_ before leaving?"

"When Erza calls, you drop everything and run lest you face her wrath," Lucy said grimly, sending a text to the red-head. Life, she decided, officially sucked ass. At least she had a nice jacket on. And her toes weren't frozen thanks to Erik's spare lab shoes ("I don't have any foot diseases, if you're wondering.").

"You need better friends."

A ping startled them both, and Lucy immediately brightened at the message. "Alright, got the address! It's 4 Ashwood Square!"

"Which would be? There are no signs."

"...um…"

"I'm gonna murder this Erza girl, yeah?"

* * *

Lucy almost put a hole through the wall via her head smashing into it when Erza answered the door and immediately held out a penknife at Erik, who, for all intents and purposes, looked as if a four-year-old had just offered him a mud pie for dinner.

"Who are you?" Erza demanded. "Why are you with Lucy?"

"I'm Dr Erik Vivas-" Lucy snorted at the title drop. Erik stepped on her foot. "Lucy's neighbour. Her car broke down and I drove her here. You wanna put that knife down now, you fucking psycho ginger?"

Erza immediately dropped into a low bow, and Erik clamped his hand over Lucy's forehead before she could give herself a concussion banging on the wall.

"Please accept my sincerest apologies! There are many miscreants in the neighbourhood-"

"Who would walk up and knock on your door to deliver your friend?" he muttered.

" _Let me die_ ," Lucy moaned.

"And I was afraid you were one of them! Lucy is my friend and I do not wish any harm to befall her. I see now that you are one of the people who I can entrust her safety to. Thank you for seeing her here."

"Lucy can handle herself." Erik's eyes shone with mirth. "She's not a  _chicken_ , after all. She just likes to scream at them."

The corner of her eye spasmed. "You're not any better you...you... _donkey_."

If Erza was confused, she hid it well, instead waving them in. They removed their shoes and headed over to the sparsely decorated living room, settling around a messy coffee table. Lucy peered at the documents strewn about. They looked like legal forms, which made sense since Erza was heading into the law stream, but there was something about them that -

"Somebody got arrested," Erik declared. "Two somebodies."

Dread filled every cell in her body. "Don't tell me Natsu and Gray…"

"Public intoxication," Erza said, folding her hands in her lap. "No bail. I've been working on trying to get them out, however I need all the help I can get. I was hoping you could help."

"Can't you just get one of those law students to do it?" Lucy asked. "I'm pretty sure that's a thing. You get a law student to represent you for free if you get them through law school."

"I will look into it." Erza nodded. "But I meant in a more... _you_  manner. I need to know if Natsu and Gray are telling the truth about them being  _mostly_ sober before I pursue legal help for them. They are both either acting very well or telling the truth."

"All that shit is monitored. If they admit they did it, that can be used against them," Erik said.

"I know. Lucy." Erza leaned over and placed her hands over the blonde's, gripping them tightly. "You have always been  _exceptional_ at reading people. I was simply hoping you could...try to figure out if they're lying or not."

Lucy sighed and nodded. "Fine. Erik, thanks for the ride, I'll find a way back myself-"

"Oh, no." His eye twinkled with mirth. "I think I'm gonna stick around for a bit. Meet the family and all, you know?"

"Oh!" Erza said, surprised. "Lucy, I did not know you two were dating."

The noise that escaped Lucy's voice-box sounded a lot like a dying crow had nose-dived into a rusty old truck engine as it was being forced to go a kilometer over a million. For a second, she couldn't hear anything, and then her ears burning and she could feel her heartbeat pounding over every inch of her body.

"No! No, we're just neighbours. Holy God, Erza, why would you even think that?"

"He said he wanted to meet the family?"

"Yeah, but...not  _meet the family_ meet the family, you know?"

"...I see."

* * *

"Lucy Heartfilia." Lahar Nayar raised a prim eyebrow. "Let me guess. Natsu Dragneel and Gray Fullbuster."

She channeled every memory she had of useless elementary school drama classes and put on the most shocked look she could muster. "How on  _Earth_  did you know?"

"Intuition," he deadpanned, "And years of dealing with your friends. They get arrested, you post bail, the cycle continues."

"No wonder you're on an all-ramen diet," Erik mused at her side. "Bail ain't cheap."

Lucy shot him a scowl. She was totally healthy. She never used those little flavour packets that came with the noodles, used chicken stock for extra flavour, and would occasionally even throw in a vegetable or two. Cheap, easy to make, filling, and a good access to carbs, which, according to Juvia, were gifts to the body if done properly. As she turned back to Lahar, Lucy vowed to go check the contents of Erik's fridge when they got back home. Probably full of poison and other nasty chemicals. All he ever seemed to consume was coffee, anyway. Did he even know what a vegetable was? Probably not. Victory one for her.

"Brought your boyfriend over?" Lahar asked. Lucy threw her arms up and groaned. "Why does  _everyone_  ask if we're dating? Can two people not exist in the same vicinity without people thinking they're gonna fuck?"

"Nope. Rule 34 and all, you know."

"You are  _so_  not helping."

"Oh, I know."

Lahar cleared his throat loudly. "Lovers spat elsewhere, hm? Come on, they've been waiting."

Lucy stepped into the back and was met almost immediately by Natsu and Gray's latest shouting match. She winced as the echos resounded in the back of her ears. At her side, Erik dug his pinkies as deeply into his ears as possible, disgust painted over his sharp features.

"It was  _your_ idea to go get Red Bull!"

"And it was  _yours_ to stop by the beer store after! This is all  _your_ fault!"

" _My fault_? If  _your_ droopy-eyed ass didn't look so much like a fucking crack-head then we wouldn't be  _in_ this mess!"

"You know  _damn_ well this is  _your_ fault for looking like such a fucking shady sociopath!"

Lucy sighed. It was almost like they were back in high-school. All the situation needed was her posting bail  _before_ coming to the back and chewing them out. Plus Erza waiting in the car with her infamous Look on. Despite the situation, she couldn't help but laugh. After a never-ending cycle of useless group members, haunted houses, frostbite, and her favourite sweater getting absolutely shredded in the laundry, this was a welcome break.

"Lucy!" Natsu yelled, waving his arms out from between the bars excitedly. "Lucy's here! Hey! Lucy!"

"Save me," Gray moaned, planting his forehead squarely between a set of bars. "I'll end up like Gormogon's Apprentice if you don't bounce me, Luce."

"Which one?" Lucy quipped, marching over to hug Natsu. She winced as the metal dug into her flesh, but that feeling was quickly overridden by a flush of content as her best friend's unnaturally warm arms breathed life back into her still-chilled limbs. It was one of the things she really did love about him - he was the best furnace to have in winter. Not as comfortable as Erik, though.

 _Not as comfortable as Erik?_ She quickly shook her head, blanching. All these dating jibes were starting to get to her. Erik? Comfortable? It was such an awkward contradiction that Lucy had a hard time not snorting. Sure, he was snarky and his clothes were a whole shit tonne warmer than her own, and sure, he drove halfway across the city in the middle of a snowstorm to fight a flock of chickens on her behalf, but the sentiment remained. Erik was no cuddly teddy-bear.

"You both look like shit," Erik said bluntly.

"Who's he?" Gray asked, suspicion colouring both his face and tone. Lucy rolled her eyes. Ah, Protector Gray. How she had missed this side of him. Not.

"Dr Erik Vivas," the aforementioned introduced. "Lucy's friend. And neighbour."

"Do you  _have_ to keep throwing your title around?" Lucy snapped. "They're gonna get confused and think you work with body parts and wonder why I'm friends with a forty-year-old."

"Because I earned the title. I do work with body parts, but ethically not while they're living. I'm  _twenty-seven_." Erik's scowl grew more pronounced. "You're off by about thirteen years there. No wonder you're a psych student, humanities kids can't do math for  _shit_."

"Hey!" Natsu's affront was palpable. Lucy pulled back as his hands went back to squeezing the bars. "Humanities kids so can do math. Ask me anything!"

"How do you calculate log?"

"You hit the button on the calculator and it does it for you."

"Manually."

"Google, probably."

Lucy rolled her eyes again. They were going to get stuck that way by the time the day was over. She had had a feeling, earlier on, that Erik and Natsu meeting would be a lot like setting a balloon full of hydrogen on fire. Very,  _very_ explosive. Natsu was all people-smart and subtle nuances, while Erik was an empiricist at heart. The only way she could feasibly see them getting along would be for getting together to watch the World Cup, and even  _then_ there ran the risk of them being die-hard supporters of opposing teams. Introducing Erik to her little rag-tag group of friends was starting to look like the aftermath of throwing more volatile chemicals in a batch of radioactive bullshit.

"So," Lucy began conversationally, leaning against the jail door to watch Erik demonstrate log calculations by hand on one of the million spare pieces of paper in his pocket. "How drunk were you two?"

"Well below the legal limit," Gray replied. "We would  _never_ go into public while hammered."

"I know," Lucy said. "But you got caught and you both failed your field sobriety tests."

Gray scoffed. "Please. Natsu can barely walk in a straight line while as sober as the Pope himself, and neither of us can recite the alphabet backwards on a good day. These tests are outdated and  _subjective_. There's no standard to test to. Come on, Luce, you know us better than that."

"So does my bank account," she replied. "It's seen you both through fist fights, a whole tonne of driving charges, destruction of property, trespassing, disturbing the peace...you get the picture, no?"

"We pay you back," Gray argued. "Late, but we do. And that's not the point. The point is this time we're telling the truth."

"And this time you need to convince me better," she said simply. "Tick tock."

"Your friends are morons," Erik said. Lucy looked over his shoulder to find Natsu poring over the paper, his nose scrunched up in abject confusion.

"They're just cranky. Ready to go?"

"I thought you'd never ask, to be honest."

"Wait, you're not posting bail?" Gray's panicked voice had her craning her head back to meet his dark blue eyes. She had to resist the urge to walk over, break open the lock, and drag them out back home to eat shitty Chinese food and watch reruns of Bones on their bootleg projector, just like they had back in high-school. Erza had specifically said to go and judge them, not bail them. Besides, she reasoned, this would be a lesson in not doing dumb things that cost friends money. It was for their own good.

"Your psycho ginger friend said no under threat of dismemberment," Erik said. "Hey, dipshits, how much do you two weigh?"

"170, why?" Natsu asked.

"How much did you guys drink and of what?"

"We had, like, two beers each."

"Yeah, max."

"Alcohol percentage?"

"Four-ish?" Gray guessed. "Maybe five. We cleaned it off in three hours."

"Great, thanks. I'd say it was nice meeting you, but it really wasn't. You're tolerable." Erik nodded at Gray. "You're the reason I need to take Tylenol before bed tonight." He waved at Natsu. "See you later." And with that, he steered Lucy out of the room back towards their car.

 _His car_. Not theirs.  _His_. Lucy made a mental note to go home and read up on intrusive thoughts and how to deal with them. It was always better to nip issues like this in the bud before they became huge problems.

"What do you think?" Erik asked her as he started the car. Lucy fiddled with the A/C vent, keeping her eyes focused on the minute adjustments she was making to the angle of the slats.

"I think they're telling the truth."

"Do you?"

She sighed and turned back to him. He wasn't staring at her unkindly, but there was no soft compassion on his face like Gray's. There was no earnest affection like Natsu. There was just a carefully blank face and an expressive eye that pierced through her, digging into every cell, probing for the truth.

God, why was he like this. They'd known each other for less than a month but she was already opening up to him as if they'd known each other a lifetime.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I  _do_ believe them, but at the same time, I have a feeling they were lying about how much they were drinking."

"I'll find out." He leaned over to poke her cheek lightly. "It's been a while since I did a BAC analysis on somebody other than myself."

"You can do that?"

"I can do a lot of things." The flash in his eye as he looked her way was nothing short of illegal. Heat flooded her cheeks so quickly she was sure that her nervous system would go into shock. He didn't mean…

_Oh._

* * *

"Well?" Erza asked anxiously, pulling them into her apartment. The scent of coffee hung thick in the air, mixed in with the undeniable scent of a Febreeze cover-up. The place was a little cleaner than before, papers stacked tidily, furniture arranged a less haphazardly, and empty mugs marched back to the dishwasher. Lucy took off her boots and stuck them on the drying mat before exhaling sharply and facing Erza.

"They aren't guilty." She said firmly. "I have a gut feeling that they weren't publicly intoxicated."

The tension that escaped Erza's shoulders could have been used to hold down a house during a hurricane. Lucy squeaked as she was pulled into a tight hug, reciprocating after she caught her breath. This was also something she missed. Tight hugs.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Erik said as he sidestepped them for the living room. The two of them followed his retreat until he was seated and scribbling away furiously on a fresh sheet of printer paper.

"He's a good man," Erza said suddenly.

"I know." Lucy smiled. "One of the best."

"No, Lucy, I mean it. This one is different." Her friend's normally sharp eyes were melancholic as they met her own. "You've known each other a brief amount of time, but the attachment is...profound."

"Well, he  _is_ a good friend," Lucy mumbled, picking at her sleeves. Erza's words had sparked a twinge of  _something_ within her. Something that she was too afraid to put a name to, because that would make it real. Hell, even his comment in the car was making this stupid fluttery feeling inside her more real. Had it just been her, then Lucy might've thought she was reading too much into it. A fleeting crush on a new friend, who happened to be attractive, intelligent, snarky, batshit insane, kind, rough around the edges, and even a little selfless. One that would go away after a while and everything would settle down and be normal again. But if  _Erza_ was seeing things, then...then was it real? Did he also have a moment of free-falling whenever their eyes met? Did her off-handed comments also have him smiling hours after the fact? Or was he just this way with all his friends?

Friends, Lucy realized, that she had only heard of in passing. Suddenly, Erik's desire to meet her own made more sense. Knowing each  _other_ was one thing, but meeting the people who had been lucky enough to share years of study sessions, movie nights, 3 am discussions, detentions, sleepovers, and a million firsts...it would be a glimpse into a world you hadn't been privy to, one that would make the world you shared with that special person a little more whole.

"That's what I used to say about Jellal," Erza ribbed her lightly.

"And now the only thing stopping you from getting married is that Jellal hasn't found a ruby red enough to beat out your hair." Lucy laughed as Erza's face flushed brilliantly. For all her bravado, the woman was as prudish as they came.

"If he winds up finding a ruby red enough to beat out your hair, call me so I can get naming rights because that would damn near be a scientific breakthrough," Erik said. Lucy jumped out of her skin, clutching her chest tightly. What the hell was he, The Flash?

How much had he  _heard_?

"It is not  _that_ red." And there was Erza the Serious again. Back to her duty as Mayor of Seriousville.

"Uh-huh. In other news, I can bust your friends out." He threw his hands out to stop them from interrupting. " _But_ this is entirely off the record, so your police officer friend is gonna have to do this on the low."

"Can you convince him?" Lucy asked. Again, his eye went dark with... _something_ as he swept his gaze over her and smirked. "I can convince anyone of anything, given the right tools of persuasion."

_Ah, fuck._

* * *

"They were at 0.05," Erik announced as he slapped his papers on Lahar's desk. To his credit, the man barely looked ruffled.

"Field test said 0.1," Lahar said.

"If I sat down and started listing off how many sources of error exist with the breathalyzers you issue for the field, I would be here until the second coming of Christ. I looked at their files and did the math by hand, it's 0.05," Erik said coolly. Lucy tilted her head, drinking in this new version of him. She could see  _Dr Vivas_ in the way he straightened his back and narrowed his eyes; in the impassive planes of his face and the almost bored tone of voice. His confidence was tangible, and it sent an electric thrill down her spine.

 _This has_ got  _to stop._

Lahar picked up the papers and spent several minutes flipping through them. Erza's grip on Lucy's arm tightened as she leaned in and hissed, "Stop fidgeting, he'll think something's wrong."

"I'm sorry," Lucy hissed back, "But this is  _really fucking stressful_."

"If it's stressful for you, imagine how stressful it is for Erik. His reputation lies in your faith in him. So stay  _calm_."

Right. She had to stay calm for this to be believable. She trusted Erik and she trusted his math and if that meant she had turn into a statue then so be it.

"How do I know this isn't bullshit?" Lahar asked.

"Because I have a fucking doctorate in toxicology and I work for the CDC. I can do this in my sleep," Erik retorted. "Now, will ya bust 'em? I have shit to do and it involves me and a bunch of benzene rings."

Lahar flipped over to the last page and raised his eyebrows. "Oh."

"You'll find that your incentive to bust them on those conditions is...exceptional."

"That it is," Lahar muttered, rising to walk to the holding area. He folded the papers and tucked them into an inner pocket, retrieving a set of skeleton keys as he did so. At Lucy's surprised expression, he smiled thinly. "Don't get much funding for lock upgrades here."

"I was more shocked by how you managed to hide those monsters in your pocket without anyone seeing, but okay."

* * *

"Dependent variable," Erik said as he dropped down beside Lucy on Erza's loveseat. He held out a Smirnoff Ice for her and took a swing of his own. "The dipshits wind up with concussions before the end of the night."

"Independent variable?" Lucy inquired, bringing the bottle to her lips. She watched as Natsu tackled Gray onto the floor and smeared cold pizza over his white shirt, cackling as the brunet below him snarled.

"Either they give it to each other, or the psych sword lady does," Erik said, draping his arm over the back of her seat. "My money is on them giving it to each other."

"Ten bucks says it's before midnight, and that it's Erza," Lucy said, hoping her voice wasn't as shrill as she thought it was. It was getting hard to ignore their proximity and the bubbles it was igniting within her that were  _definitely_ not due to the alcohol.

"It's on."

It was silent for a few seconds before she spoke again. "Thank you. For what you did, I mean. I swear, you're starting to make our save score uneven."

"Just means you'll have to stick around longer to pay me back," Erik said, a teasing lilt to his tone. "And what a  _horror_ that will be."

Lucy smacked him lightly. "Just for that, I'm sticking around forever."

"Damn, here I was hoping I would be able to keep all my sweaters to myself."

Silence fell between them, the only sounds being her friends shouting at one another and the TV playing some jaunty infomercials.

"Their BAC wasn't 0.05," Erik said suddenly.

Lucy's jaw dropped. "You  _lied_? Oh my God, you could get into so much trouble!"

"Didn't  _technically_ lie. I used the numbers they gave me and got 0.06. A little over legal, but I could embellish it a little. Call it...science privilege." He grinned to himself. "You humanities kids wouldn't understand."

"I do," Lucy said softly. "I'm understanding slowly, but...I'm understanding everything a little better now."

In a split second, he pulled her flush to his chest and tucked her head beneath his chin. Lucy dropped her bottle, her shaking hands finding purchase in gripping his shirt. She could feel his heartbeat thudding steadily in contrast to her racing one, and she fought to keep her breaths level. What the  _hell_ was he doing? There was no way he could have detected her stupid crush in that one sentence, right? Because if so, psychology departments worldwide would be racing to get him to come in and show them his ways. Lucy would have first pickings obviously, but the sentiment remained - what the fuck?

And then Natsu crashed into the spot her head had been a second ago and everything clicked into place.

_Goddammit, Natsu._

"I win," Erik said, balancing his bottle on her shoulder.

Lucy groaned and flopped over his lap, resting her head on his thigh.

She was gonna die before New Years. She just knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	5. Five Multicoloured Rings, One Gold Medal

Lucy wasn't sure what to be more offended by: the fact that Erik had,  _once again_ , found his way onto her sofa, or the fact that he was wearing a jersey in support of Desierto's ice hockey team.

Being a  _Fiore-or-bust_  kinda girl herself, she was inclined to think the latter.

"Is that a Desierto jersey?" Lucy demanded, setting her groceries down in the kitchen and moving to plant herself in front of the TV. "Erik Adria Vivas, I  _know_  you are not leveling me with this kind of disrespect under my own damn roof."

"Did you just middle-name-drop me?" Erik asked in abject disbelief.

"Yes. Now explain the jersey before I permanently blacklist you from my apartment."

"Winter Olympics?" He raised a brow. "The ice hockey matches are today. Fiore versus Desierto. Match of the century."

"Why are you watching it in my apartment? You have your own TV." A very fancy TV at that. Half the reason Lucy enjoyed her infrequent trips upstairs was his massive TV. Not only was it wider than her arm span (granted, that wasn't much), but the thing had just about every channel known to man programmed onto it, so she could indulge in her guilty pleasure soaps without having to deal with the billion trojan viruses that came from torrenting them on her crappy laptop. Soaps, Lucy mused, that she hadn't caught up on in about a week.

"Er, about that." He looked down at his fuzzy socks as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. "So, I got kinda hammered last night and thought it would be fun to make elephant toothpaste, except I misjudged the amounts and shit so my TV is kinda under a mountain of foam right now."

"You work for the CDC."

"When I'm sober."

"You," Lucy announced. "Are fucking  _hopeless_."

"Eh, I manage," he said offhandedly. "Besides, I got you to balance out the idiocy."

Lucy ducked back into the kitchen before the heat in her cheeks caused a distinct rise in the living room's temperature. There he was doing it again. That thing where he said shit straight out of a cheesy romance flick and had her piece-of-shit brain going a million miles an hour picking apart each word as if it were a poem to be analyzed for one of Mard Geer's legendary English courses.

"Wanna get me a drink?" Erik called from the other room. "Game's in T-minus...twenty."

"Fiore's gonna win," Lucy said as she pulled out two clunky plastic tumblers and set them on the counter. She then went for her meager liquor shelf and went through the motions of preparing a Long Island Iced Tea - a drink she had made so many times she didn't need to pay attention to the portion sizes any more: a half ounce of triple sec, rum, gin, vodka, and tequila, an ounce of sour mix, and seven ounces of coke to top it off. She substituted the lemon slices for lemon juice and tossed in a few ice cubes before carrying the cirrhosis-in-a-cup, as she had fondly dubbed it, back to her sofa. She made sure to keep a solid foot between herself and Erik, because there was no doubt in her mind if he touched her that her drink would find itself a new home in the fabric of her ratty sweater.

"Nope. I did a statistical analysis on the last Olympics and found that Desierto has been kicking your  _ass_ when it comes to gold medal wins," Erik said proudly.

"Get the fuck out."

"What, don't believe me?" At her raised eyebrow, he shoved his drink in her spare hand and headed for her balcony. Alarmed, Lucy set the drinks down and followed him out, only to wish  _both_ those drinks were currently in her bloodstream because she was way too sober for the events to follow.

"Erik!" She screeched. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

"Climbing up?" He waved the string of lights that he had yet to hoist up from where it dangled off his balcony. Lucy was  _still_ debating whether or not she needed to call a physicist to come in and check on the structural integrity of that thing because no matter how hard she tugged on it, come hell or high water, it would  _not budge_. Nevertheless, her heart was giving Usain Bolt's a run for his money, what with how rapidly it was beating. She didn't care if that string could withstand being torched by the sun - if he fell down and cracked his  _stupid, thick skull_ open on the ground, she would bring him back to life to kill him all over again

"Can you not take the stairs?"

"Nah, this is faster. Be right back." And with that, her resident idiot was scaling the rope like a pre-teen boy during the gymnastics session of P.E. Lucy threw her hands up in the air and ventured back inside, sliding her balcony door shut.  _Let him have fun breaking in now_ , she thought sourly as she sat down and picked up her drink. It was only after about five sips that she realized she had no idea which cup was hers and she had selected at random, at which point her drug-dealing neighbour a floor down probably heard her spontaneously combust.

Holy shit, had she just indirectly kissed him?

"Those don't mean anything, right, Plue?" Lucy turned to her dog nervously. Plue, ever the traitor, merely went back to shredding Erik's scarf.

It wasn't like they were in the fifth grade, she scolded herself. Indirect kisses weren't a thing at her age.

…could they be?

_Okay, Lucy, stay calm. There's a fifty percent chance that you just...totally drank your own drink and not his. Even if you did drink his, there's not remotely enough saliva present to constitute a proper kiss. But there was indirect lip contact. A smooch? No. A peck._

"I indirectly pecked him." She covered her face with her hands and groaned. Crushes needed to be illegal. Emotions in general, really, but she'd settle for a small victory.

"Seriously?" Erik grumbled as he slammed the balcony door shut behind him. "Locking me out? Where is your Christmas spirit?"

"In the same place as Desierto's chances of winning," Lucy shot back.

"ANOVA would like to have  _several_ words with you." He threw a folded sheet of paper on her lap before plopping down next to her, closer than before, and snagging his (or her) drink. Lucy opened the sheets and winced. She had never liked stats. There were too many tests for what she felt could be deduced just by looking at the overall number and going 'this is bigger'.

"Levene's test is insignificant," Lucy pointed out. "Doesn't that mean this whole test was moot?"

"Levene's is  _supposed_ to be insignificant, it means equal variances are assumed," Erik corrected, leaning closer. Lucy stiffened as his breath gently ruffled the hair that had fallen over her cheek. Holy mother of  _God_ , he was close. Way,  _way_  too close.

"So, um." Lucy shuffled to the next page, focusing on the post-hoc tests. She was pleased to see that, at the very least, she recognized this. "These are to tell me where the differences exist, yeah?"

Erik tapped the paper lightly. "Check the significance column. Under point-zero-five and we're good. Then look at the mean and standard deviation. As you can see, Desierto has been kicking Fiore's  _ass_."

"This is bullshit," Lucy declared, folding the paper and tucking it under a pillow. "We have Lyon Vastia, all else is irrelevant."

"What should I have expected out of a soft science?" He sighed dramatically, falling back and snatching her back pillow. Lucy's eye twitched. There he was doing it again. That thing where his STEM elitism came out full force and Lucy felt the need to beat him with a copy of her neuropsych textbook in the hopes of transferring the words in the text to his head via forced osmosis.

"It's not like quantitative data means anything to you lot."

She was going to strangle him with the lights hanging off his balcony. After she beat him with her textbook, of course.

"That's  _it_!" She leapt to her feet and jabbed two fingers into his sternum, taking great pleasure when he jerked back. Sternal rubs - great for everything from assessing consciousness to waking up drunk people.

"If Fiore wins, you get a psych tattoo done on you! On your chest! It's gonna be a huge brain and it's gonna have 'I love psychology' written around it in big, swirly script," Lucy said. Erik's functioning brow raised at that. He stood up, causing Lucy to inch back a little. He was  _tall_. A little  _too_  tall to be intimidated by her tiny frame, but dammit she would try. She squared her shoulders and stared up at him stubbornly.

Bastard looked  _amused_. Amused!

"When Desierto wins, you're gonna get the entire periodic table tattooed on your back," he countered. "Colour coded, too."

"Deal!" She stuck her hand out. Erik returned the gesture, and Lucy was struck by how surprisingly soft his hands were. She would have thought with all the time spent wearing latex gloves that they would have been more clammy.

"I use a lot of lotion."

Shit, had she said that out-loud?

...wait.

"Oh,  _ew_."

* * *

She was choking.

"Get  _off_!" Lucy gasped, struggling to get her hands out from under her. The weight on her back pressed down harder, forcing her ribs down on her knuckles. She kept her legs locked out of fear of jostling them too hard and knocking a kneecap out of place.

Lucy craned her neck to the side and took in shallow breaths, just like she remembered doing during swim practice as a child. Small and steady, small and steady, small and-

"Desierto  _nation_ , baby!" Erik crowed from where he was pinning her down in his excitement. He tightened his grip around her shoulders and cheered. "Get ready for that table, Heartfilia!"

"Fuck you!" She snapped her head back, allowing a satisfied smirk to curl her lips up as he cursed and drew back. Lucy twisted over, planting her feet firmly in his lap and stomping down a little too close to his family jewels.

"Fiore will make a comeback in the last ten minutes," she said confidently. They  _had_  to make a comeback. There was no way she could  _ever_  wear her favourite tank tops out in public with a periodic table big enough to be seen from Mars stamped across her back.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Vastia score the tying goal.

"Yes!" She screeched, leaping up and tackling him. Erik let out an undignified squawk (had it been any other time and she would have teased him for hours about that) and clamped down on her hips, pushing her away. "Get off, you psycho bitch!"

"Eat ass!" Lucy chirped, relaxing her grip but staying attached to him. She would be lying to herself if she said she  _totally_  wasn't using the game as an excuse to sidle up to him and get physical. Inner Cana wanted her to lay one on him right there and then; Rational Lucy wanted her to run to the nearest highway and crawl into a ditch; Regular Lucy wanted Erik to stretch his arms around her back a little more so the pseudo-hug got more...pseudo hug-y.

"Vastia's gonna win, he's gonna win, there's no doubting this, Vastia's gonna win and then Dr Vivas is gonna have to explain to his colleagues why he's softening up to a soft science."

"My  _colleagues_ know when to keep their damn mouths shut," he muttered into her neck. "I get to play with the fun poisons that they like staying away from."

"You're an ass," she announced, unwinding herself from him and curling up to his side instead. "What did they ever do to you?"

"Breathe, generally." Erik rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Oh, and steal my lunch that one time, but after the laxatives in the next batch they stopped."

"So if I stole your lunch you'd give me laxatives?"

"Nah, I take pity on your poor, undergrad soul. My shitty food is probably a Michelin meal compared to your ramen."

"I hope you get hydrochloric acid spilled on your arm and you wind up with a horrible scar."

"You say that as if that hasn't already happened. Minus the scar."

"Of  _course_ it has," she mumbled, turning her full attention back to the screen. Vastia flew across the ice as if it were designed solely with his strengths in mind, weaving between other players and maneuvering the puck like it was an attachment of his hockey stick. Lucy's blood pumped faster with every near-miss he had, angling herself with his twists and turns - it was like magic, she thought, the way one man had such command over himself and an audience.

"Come on, Vastia," she breathed, bouncing her leg anxiously. Her nails would be sore the next day with how deeply she had bitten them.

"Conbolt has this in the bag," Erik snapped back, though he seemed somewhat nervous now that Vastia was getting close to the net.

"Conbolt's got shitty reaction time, he's never gonna be able to intercept."

Vastia narrowly missed a player from the right. Lucy's hands shot out and grabbed Erik's, gripping them tightly.

" _Please_ , Vastia's only got his speed going for him. He can't see shit coming for him."

Conbolt swept in from the side, throwing his stick out to try and bring the puck towards himself. Erik didn't protest as she drew their joined hands towards her chest. If anything, he squeezed back harder.

"Considering Vastia's about to score the winning goal-"

"Considering Conbolt's about to ride Desierto to victory-"

The apartment went black.

"Did…"

"The lights just went out." Erik sounded dazed. Lucy herself felt as though the wind had just been knocked out of her chest.

"I'm going to murder our downstairs neighbour," she said calmly.

"Not if I get to him first."

* * *

"Turns out it was some electrical issue, so the junkies are safe for now," Lucy sighed as she concluded her tale. Across the table, Erza nodded sympathetically. Gray and Natsu were busy kicking each other under the table (half of the kicks having been delivered to her by accident) and sipping at their hot cocoa. Seated next to her, Erik looked half ready to take his fork and cleave off their legs - she imagined he had received the other half of the kicks.

Two hours after The Incident found the group at a sports bar near the university. Lucy had tried to run to the bartender to find out who won the match (though she had absolutely no doubt in her mind that it was Fiore), but then she had spotted her friends in a corner and made a mad dash towards them. Erik had slipped off to get the two of them drinks (of the non alcoholic variety, seeing as the Long Island had started taking effect) and returned with an annoyed expression and promises that  _no, I had_ not  _asked who won the match you brat, I said we'd figure out together, didn't I?_

"Pity," Erik said. "Some of the newbies are getting tired of rat testing."

"You're kidding, right?" Gray paled. " _Right_?"

Erik flashed his teeth in a broad grin. "Am I?"

"Lucy, you're dating a  _creep_ ," Natsu said sagely. Said blonde choked on her hot chocolate, gagging as a marshmallow went down the wrong pipe. Erik thumped her back until she threw a hand up and pinned her best friend with a glare so vicious he grabbed Gray's discarded jacket and used it as a shield.

"We're not dating," she snarled. Thankfully, her cheeks were still flushed from the cold outside so it wasn't like they could see the difference after his comment. It was bad enough that her traitor brain was making her have  _feelings_  - those she could keep to herself. Her friends making stupid remarks, however, she could not keep to herself.

Well, maybe if she whipped out some blackmail from high school…

"Lyon's gonna have a riot when he hears about this," Gray laughed. "Damn, I can't wait to tell him at Christmas."

Lucy had gone eerily still. "You know Lyon Vastia?"

Gray raised an eyebrow. "He's my half-brother, didn't you know?"

" _What_!" She screeched, launching herself across the table and grabbing his shirt. "I'm half a degree of separation from  _Lyon fucking Vastia_?! All this time! Gray, why didn't you tell me before?"

"I thought you knew!" He yelled, tugging her wrists. His wide eyes darted frantically from Natsu (who was cackling) to Erza (who was busy texting someone - Jellal, probably) to Erik (who looked as pleased as a fat cat), silently begging one of them to take her off him.

"So who won the match?" The toxicologist eventually asked, pulling Lucy down by the back of her sweater.

"It was a tie," Gray said. "Fiore and Desierto split gold."

"Wait, so does this mean we  _both_ get tattoos?" Lucy turned to Erik.

"Tattoos?" Erza perked up at that. "Erik, I entrusted you with Lucy in the hopes that you wouldn't drag her down into these barbaric activities. I see that my trust was misplaced. Very well, then. I challenge you to a duel-"

"Doesn't Jellal have tats?" Natsu mused.

"Don't  _you_ have a tramp stamp, Erza?" Gray pointed out. "I saw it when-" Abruptly, he was silent.

"You  _saw it when what_?"

"Never! Didn't see a thing!"

"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!" Natsu squeaked.

" _Oh, so I am evil now?_ "

"No, wait, Erza-!"

"Your friends are certifiably batshit insane, I hope you know that," Erik said in an undertone. Lucy laughed and grabbed his peppermint latte, finishing it off with a flourish and looking up at him. "Yup!"

"You got a little…" He pointed at her upper lip.

"Huh?"

He wiped it with his thumb and drew back to show her the whipped cream. "A little  _that_."

"You ruined my Santa moustache!"

"You know if you rearrange the words in Santa you get Satan?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Eh, nothing really, just thought it was fitting for you." He popped his thumb into his mouth and licked off the cream, wrinkling his nose. "Ugh, way too sweet."

"Erik indirectly kissed Lucy!" Natsu yelled.

" _What_?"

"Erza, put the tinsel down, dammit!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	6. Six Scrambled-ish Eggs

"If this was crack, this would be a druggies wet dream," Mest Gryder commented shortly after they exited the exam hall. "Actually, I knew this one dude in high school who tried snorting snow because he was so high already he thought God had gifted him with more. Which reminds me of when-"

If there was a thing worse than being catatonic, Lucy felt it would aptly describe her state of mind upon seeing the blizzard raging outdoors. She just wanted to go  _home_  dammit. It was bad enough that Crocus U had probably invented a weather machine for the sole purpose of making it snow during exam season and then denying them inclement weather days, but they always seemed to bring out the big guns after exams that left Lucy feeling like her brain had been sliced into itty bitty pieces by one of those Japanese kitchen knives they always advertised on late night infomercials.

"-and  _that's_  how we got Rockets and Pixy Stix banned in middle school," Mest concluded with a sigh.

"How am I gonna get home in this?" Lucy moaned.

"You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"

"I'm gonna get hypothermia. Or pneumonia. Or both."

"I'd offer you a ride, but I don't think the streets are clear just yet. Guess we gotta stay on campus till it calms down," he said. "I'm gonna head over to the library, wanna come with?"

"No thanks, I'm gonna find an empty room to cry in," Lucy replied.

"Have fun." He waved and headed left down the hall. Lucy pulled out her phone and scrolled through her notifications. A couple snaps from Natsu and Gray, an email from the university about a mental health survey, pop-ups from YouTube...nothing pertinent. Bored, she opened up her messages and shot off a quick text to the one person she knew would likely respond within five minutes.

**To: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 12:32 PM**

_I'm snowed in at the U. Any chance you can come save me from this based hell?_

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 12:33 PM**

_I know you soft sciences don't get to venture into the grown-ups area, but if you can make it to the chemistry labs then I'll reward you with your very own lab coat. Monogrammed._

**To: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 12:33 PM**

_Pissing me off and then inviting me to a room full of volatile chemicals sounds like something a hard sciences like you would do_

* * *

"You know, I forgot to ask but why are you here?" Lucy asked once she was sure the beaker Erik was toying with was safely on the lab bench.

"The dean of the faculty asked me to come a do a triple point demo for the first-years," he replied shortly, pointing to the Florence flask full of a clear liquid sitting at the end of one of the benches. "Cyclohexane."

"That's the one where it's a solid, liquid, and gas all at once, right?" Her cheeks flushed as his eyebrow raised in subtle approval. It would have been a lot sexier had his safety-goggles not been the size of Mars, but she would take what she could get.

"Close enough. They exist in equilibrium at the same time, so it looks kinda like it's going through all the phases in order but not exactly," he said as he handed her a white lab coat. Lucy bit back a laugh at the Sharpie'd 'HONORARY CHEMIST LUCY HEARTFILIA' on the left side. The coat fit comfortably enough around her chest, which was a miracle in and of itself, but the sleeves easily touched the middle of her palms. Figuring she wouldn't be handling anything caustic, she rolled them up to her wrists and stuffed her hands into the deep pockets.

"Do I look science-y enough?"

"Regular Bill Nye," Erik said dryly. "Now, would you like to stave off your boredom by doing something useful? Because I promise you these little shits didn't clean their equipment properly and I would prefer if they were as uncontaminated as possible for the next run."

"What makes you think I'm any better than them at cleaning it?"  _He trusts you!_ Inner Cana crooned.  _Pin him up against that lab bench and suck-_

"They're little shits. You're a big shit. See the difference?"

"Ah, yes, one ends up with you in Dr Kaur's office again, regretting your life after meeting me."

"You say that as if I hadn't started after meeting the red-headed Xena bitch."

"Don't call Erza a bitch, she's fond of you."

"Fond of me?" Erik said incredulously. He pulled aside his lab coat and shirt, pointing to his exposed pecs. Lucy felt a lot like the chemicals in the lab at that moment - overheated and ready to implode. He had  _no right_ being this attractive. None at all.

"Do you see this?" He waved at the small scratches criss-crossing his skin. "Remnants from the Tinsel Terror. The dean thought I'd had a  _long night_ , and so did several students. Do you have any idea how invasive these kids can get? Between this and the tattoo, they'll be asking for wedding invites very soon."

Lucy pulled her hand out of her pocket to glance down at her matching half of the dopamine tattoo on her wrist. It had been a nice compromise between them - her favourite neurotransmitter ('the brain bit' as Erik had dubbed it) and his pristinely drawn chemical structure ('the boring bit' she had cheerfully retorted) split between the two. The benzene ring and hydroxyl groups covered his wrist, and the ethyl chain and amine group covered hers. It wasn't what she had imagined her first tattoo would look like, but in all honesty she couldn't imagine getting anything else. Minimalistic and meaningful.

"The horror," she deadpanned. "Married to me, a simple soft science. I'd corrupt our children with my wicked, qualitative ways."

"Exactly." He nodded sagely. "If our kids wind up in the soft sciences, I'm disowning them. Wait, kids? Plural? More than one? Slow down there, we did not plan for this. Also, wash with regular water and then rinse with de-ionized in the end."

Lucy picked up a beaker and poured a helping of the powdery soap into it, grabbing a nearby scrubber and setting to work. "The first one was an accident, the other two were planned."

"Three kids? Do I look like I'm made of money?"

"Yes. You're a money tree. Shed money like you grow grey hairs."

Erik ran his fingers through his hair, patting the edges self-consciously. "I do  _not_ have grey hair."

"Yeah you do, right there, see?" Lucy indicated his temples with a soapy hand. "Little grey's."

"You're going blind. Or projecting. Or both."

"Projecting is soft science. Do you accept us now, Erik? Do you?"

"I would have to be dead to-"

The room went black.

Lucy blinked rapidly to adjust to the sudden change in her visual field, slowly placing her beaker into the sink and stepping back to assess the situation.

One. It was dark. It was snowing outside. Snow outside plus no power inside meant that it was going to get very cold, very fast. Two. She was trapped in a lab with a guy she had the hots for. Three. There was no way for her to get home in this weather.

Lucy very dearly wished she could ram the cleaning brush down her throat and be done with it all.

"Well, I've seen this porno before," Erik broke the silence with his usual droll.

...ram the cleaning brush down  _his_ throat first, and then hers.

He perched his phone on the lab bench face down so his flashlight faced the ceiling and provided a soft enough light that they could look at each other without having to squint too hard. Lucy was taken aback by how  _tired_ he looked. Maybe it was the lighting that was casting shadows on his face and making his cheeks look hollow. Maybe it was the sudden lack of goggles to hide the dark circles under his eyes. Maybe it was nothing, but for a brief second she saw a glimpse of the toxicologist working long hours to solve some epidemic or the other underneath the perpetually bored elitist who enjoyed riling her up.

"You're disgusting," Lucy announced at the same time her stomach made itself known. Very vocally.

Erik raised a brow. "Uh-huh."

"I haven't eaten in, like, ten hours. Sue me."

"I have an idea."

"Erik, no. Whatever it is, no."

"Erik,  _yes_."

* * *

"This is a horrible idea," Lucy said. "Have I mentioned this already?"

"Six times in the last eight minutes, yes," Erik replied.

Lucy had never been back to where the university's cafeteria stored their food, but with the way Erik was jimmying the lock, it wasn't his first time on this particular rodeo. She had only ever seen people attempt to pick locks with hairpins on TV, and they made it look as easy as breathing. Real life was disappointing because it had been five minutes, he had broken two of her bobby pins so far, and they were no closer to hijacking the cafeteria's food supply than they were when they had first arrived.

"Won't they notice we've stolen it?" she fretted. This would turn her into a  _criminal_. God, she would get kicked out of university and she would have to move back home and then face her  _dad_ and have to explain to him she got booted for hijacking fucking  _food_ with a wayward chemist and he would have a riot telling her that he was right and she should have just stayed home because she couldn't make it in the  _real world_  like she said she could.

Perhaps she was being dramatic, but that was besides the point.

"Nah, it's like...a rite of passage for most grad students in chemistry. Ah- _hah_!" Erik turned to her with triumph written over his stupidly handsome face. He pushed the door open and gave an exaggerated bow. "After you."

The storage area was stainless steel from floor to ceiling, with firm shelves planted in equal rows, full of non-perishables and cooking utensils. In the back, she spotted what looked like an industrial sized vault-turned-fridge, which explained the chill in the room, though that could have easily just been the temperature outside sneaking its way in somehow. There had to be a chemistry law for this. She'd ask when she wasn't acting like a fugitive.

"What do we need to get?"

"Milk and eggs." He pointed to the fridge. "Probably in there, only one of us should go in and get it in case the thing shuts, so the person on the outside can open it. I'm in no mood to turn into a cobrasickle tonight, thanks. You get vanilla extract, if you can find it."

Lucy turned on her heel and headed towards the back shelves. Those were the ones with a million jars on them, so she figured vanilla extract would be in there somewhere. Mercifully, the jars were labelled with bright stickers and thick black letters so it was hard to miss her mark when she spotted it. She tucked it under her arm and headed back to the vault, which was still open and letting out a draft.

"Erik?" she called. "Are you dead? Because I'll let you freeze in there."

A horrible lie, but beautiful revenge for his cryogenic quip back when they had to bail out Natsu and Gray.

"These people are so cheap," he groaned as he exited the vault and slammed it shut. He had two plastic bags slung over his shoulders, one clearly heavier than the other. "I did a cursory check outside, they're missing, like, a whole fuck tonne of things we need. Like cloves. And peppermint."

"We can do without that," Lucy said. "Or find a replacement. There's probably extract somewhere."

"No, I have a better idea."

"Erik. No."

"Shh, sweet princ-blondie. Erik knows all."

* * *

"I didn't even know we  _had_ food growing in the greenhouses," Lucy murmured, moaning once she stepped into the room. God, it was so  _warm_. The temperature in the building was so low it was almost like she'd gone numb and the greenhouse was  _oozing_ warm and fluffy air. She tilted her head to the side and saw Erik looking at her as if she'd just grown a third head or a second boob and  _wow_ the heat of the room and his eyes was killing her idioms.

"What?" she demanded.

"Do you always have mini-orgasms walking into rooms, or is this one special?"

Lucy squeaked and smacked his arm none-too-gently. "You're so gross, ew! No! I'm just cold and this place is warm and...ew!"

"Ah, virgin. You can always tell," he said sagely, heading down the rows and rows of greenery. "And to answer your earlier question, no, we don't  _technically_ grow food here in the same vein that the chemistry department doesn't  _technically_ distill alcohol for fun. That is to say, we totally do but we also don't. Schrodinger's food and booze, if you will. Now, help me find cloves."

"I'm  _so_ not a virgin," she asserted, whipping out her phone to google what cloves looked like in plant form. She began to walk through the aisles, lightly prodding leaves to see if the tell-tale black spice was poking out from any of them.

"Lies. Also, this area is done alphabetically by family, so look in  _M_ for Myrtaceae."

Lucy looked down to the little tabs on the shelf and saw she was next to something belonging to Lamiaceae and moved to the next row over to start her search again. As she mouthed out the Latin names, comparing them to the one her search had pulled up, she called back to him. "How can you tell?"

"Tell what?"

"That I'm a virgin. Because I'm not, but how could you tell if I was?"

"You had a heart attack over me making an orgasm joke. You're not a prude, so the next logical step is virgin. Hey, did you happen to pass by Lamiaceae?"

"Yeah, shelf next to mine. Found the cloves, by the way! Syzygium aromaticum, yeah?" Lucy's voice was as steady as a surgeon's hands, which was a miracle in and of itself. How was she supposed to tell him the heart attack wasn't from the orgasm joke itself, but the fact that  _he_ had told it? There were  _limits_ to what her poor, hormone riddled, metaphorical-and-also-literal heart could take, and the object of her affections cracking a sex joke was not on the very short list. Why? Because with him making an orgasm joke came the association of Erik and orgasms, followed by off-handed thoughts about Erik and orgasms, and then from there would come daydreams about Erik and orgasms, and then before she knew it she'd be waking up in a cold sweat because her sleep-addled mind took 'Erik' and 'orgasms' and made a full blown prono out of it.

 _Oh, we don't have to wait for sleep,_ Inner Cana said slyly,  _there's aphrodasiacs in this greenhouse somewhere, no…?_

"I got peppermint." His low voice rumbled in her ear. Lucy jumped, dropping the cloves she'd managed to pick. The spices lay forgotten on the ground with her dignity as she lost all the breath in her lungs at their proximity. He was  _so close holy fucking gods above._

She couldn't describe the expression on his face, exactly, which was odd because Lucy excelled at detecting micro-expressions; she aced the practicums. His face was blank, but there was a tilt to his mouth that suggested frustration and a furrow to his brows that...well, she'd only ever seen it in people confused but the heat in his eye made it very clear that he  _wasn't_ confused at all. Before she could open her mouth, his face was wiped clean of it all and replaced with a smug grin.

" _You_ get to clean all that up. And pick up new ones.  _Probie_."

* * *

Milk, cloves, vanilla extract, cinnamon sticks, eggs, sugar, cream,  _whipped cream_ , peppermint, nutmeg.

"Eggnog," Lucy said in abject disbelief. "We're making  _eggnog_."

"Yeah, what did you think we were making?" Erik shot her a puzzled look over the glassware he was setting out. With both their cell phones shining their light onto their one lab bench, she spotted two 600 mL beakers and what looked like glass stir rods in them both.

"You grind up the spice, I'll get the hot plate ready," he said, sliding a mortar and pestle over. Lucy picked up the nutmeg and rammed the pestle down hard enough to land a sufficient crush. Satisfied, she continued to squish the nutmeg, wholly absorbed in her task. It was quiet for a while, just the steady  _thunk-thunk-thunk_ of her pestle, and Erik's soft grumbles as he fiddled with the dials on the hot-plate.

"I lost my virginity to Gray," she said suddenly.

"Motherfuck!" Erik hissed, pulling his hand back and sticking his index finger in his mouth. Lucy looked up quickly enough to catch the surprise on his face before it melted away into annoyance.

"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned. "There's a first aid kit here somewhere, right?"

" _Fuck_  the first aid - I burnt - what the  _fuck_  - _Fullbuster?_  What? I - you can't just say this shit out of  _nowhere_!" He finally managed to sputter out. "Where the hell did this come from?"

"You said I was a virgin. I'm not. It was during our annual Christmas bash last year, we were pretty drunk and split a room because Natsu and Erza had passed out on the futon. One thing led to another, and…" she shrugged. "We agreed to never speak about it again."

If she wasn't mistaken, that was pity in his eye. "You lost your virginity in drunk sex? That's genuinely the biggest tragedy of this year. Whiskey dick is  _real_."

"Ironically, it was more eggnog dick." She laughed. "I don't really remember much, but it wasn't awful as far as firsts go. At least it was to a friend, you know?"

"I was 17 when I lost mine," Erik mused, measuring out milk in a separate beaker. "Prom night. After-party was held at Hibiki Lates's house 'cause it was the biggest. He had this hot tub and me and this brunette, don't remember her name, got into it and the rest is history."

"At least I remember who took mine." Lucy rolled her eyes and moved on to the cinnamon. She was amazed at how easily she was able to have an actual conversation about sex with  _Erik fucking Vivas_  and not spontaneously combust. Perhaps it would be one of those delayed reactions where she would wake up two days later in terror at three am because  _what the fuck she talked_ sex  _with her_ crush.

"Fair point. You done with the spices?" Lucy nodded and slid the petri dish with them over. She watched as Erik planted the biggest beaker he had, roughly 1000 mL, onto the hot-plate and poured four cups of milk into it, followed by the crushed cloves, vanilla, and cinnamon, stirring it gently with a glass-stir rod.

"You know how to separate egg yolk from the whites?" he asked.

"Yup. How many do I need to do?"

"12 sounds good to me. There's a plastic water bottle in one of the bag lockers, just make sure to empty it before you get to it."

Lucy searched through three bag lockers before she found one half-empty water bottle available for use. She dumped out the water and made her way over to where the eggs lay next to yet another beaker and what looked like a misshapen mixing bowl. "What's this thing?"

"A desiccator. We use it to keep things from drying out. I got rid of the silica so there's nothing in there. Put the yolks in and then whisk them with the stir rod."

Lucy cracked an egg open into the beaker and then grabbed the bottle and pushed it in nozzle-first towards the yolk, coaxing it into the hole. Once it was in, she tapped the bottle against the side of the desiccator until it dropped in. One down, eleven to go.

"Do you regret it?" Erik asked. "Drunk sex?"

"Not really," Lucy said, cracking open another egg. "I mean, it wasn't what I imagined but it was with someone I trust, so…"

"How  _did_ you imagine it would pan out? Wait, let me guess. Bed, flowers, wined and dined…"

"I always imagined I'd lose it in the backseat of a car," she mused, snorting when she caught his scandalized, but still approving, stare. "What? I'm not a prissy princess. What about you? Hot tub a thing of your dreams?"

"Nah. Sofa. But, you know, the lab benches don't look  _too_ terrible…" he trailed off suggestively, cackling when Lucy accidentally dropped a whole egg into the whites. "Blondie's having dirty thoughts!"

"Says the man discussing his fantasies when making  _eggnog_  with lab equipment," she shot back. He wasn't wrong in the slightest, because Lucy distinctly remembered Inner Cana making a dry comment about pinning him up against a lab bench and sucking his soul out of his dick.

Today was  _not_ her fucking day.

"Uh-huh. You done whisking the eggs? Good, put in a cup and a half of sugar. Eyeball it, I don't care, but for what it's worth, a cup equals about 237 mL, so if you wanna grab a beaker…"

Lucy dutifully snatched another beaker and poured out the requisite amount. It was a lot harder to 'whisk' things with a stir rod, but Lucy was nothing if not vastly determined, so she kept at it until it was frothing and even all the way through. Erik made his way over with the beaker of milk held firmly within the grasp of tongs, which he tilted to pour into the bowl. Lucy bit back a soft sigh as steam rose to fluff her hair and waft up her nose, bringing with it the sweet smell of eggnog.

Erik took over the mixing from her, stirring slowly so as not to slosh any of the hot liquid over the edges. After a few minutes, he handed her the rod and went back to his end of the bench and dragged a much larger hot-plate over and plugged it in. Once it was sufficiently heated, she helped him heft the desiccator onto it and thus began the stirring process once more.

"Hey, you wanna get the peppermint leaves and toss 'em in? It ain't eggnog without the minty touch, in my humble and factual opinion," Erik announced with the same tone one might take when accepting a Nobel Peace Prize. Lucy took a few leaves and shoved them between his lips before tossing the rest in the desiccator. Erik kept a perfectly straight face as he chewed on the leaves and swallowed them.

"My mouth tastes like what I imagine a diabetic elf's piss tastes like," he deadpanned. Lucy burst into a fit of giggles at the image that sprouted to mind. Erik, dressed like the Grinch, chugging down the 'apple juice' some health conscious little girl had set out for Santa, while the elves who'd peed in a cup hid behind the Christmas tree and laughed as he drank the minty death.

God, she needed sleep.

"Hey, go open the fridge door." He jerked his head towards the glass cabinet looking thing in the back. She supposed having a fridge was rational - different chemicals needed to be stored at different temperatures to keep from going crazy. She remembered that lesson from high school when she was Natsu's unfortunate lab partner. In fact, she probably still had a bit of a scar on her hip from the Test Tube Incident…

Lucy watched as he poured the contents into yet another desiccator and brought that one over to the fridge. Once it was safely on a shelf, she shut the door and looked up at him expectantly.

"We'd have to wait a few hours normally, but I dicked around with the temperature of the fridge. It should be ready by the time we're done cleaning everything." Erik barked out a laugh at her groan. She  _hated_ huge clean up ops…

He was lucky he was cute.

* * *

"Okay, last step." Erik pulled out a bottle of clear liquid and poured out a sizeable amount into both their 500 mL beakers of eggnog, before cracking out the whipped cream and squeezing out a healthy dollop onto both their drinks.

"I present to you, eggnog chez...the internet." He tapped his beaker to hers and brought it back to his lips. "Cheers."

Lucy took a deep swig and bit back a cough. The eggnog was  _strong_. It burned going down her throat and the cinnamon and mint combo left her tongue feeling tingly, though she suspected that had more to do with whatever he had dropped into the drink than the spices.

"Yeah, should've warned you, the alcohol percentage on that thing is through the roof. Ish. Okay, maybe, like 55%, not that bad in the dilution but…" he quickly took another sip. Lucy laughed and pointed at his face. "Santa's got a brother!"

His cream-moustache only emphasized the visible effort it was taking him to hide a grin of his own. "Mrs. Claus has a sister."

Lucy poked her tongue out and licked off as much off her own moustache as she could. It would be pointless as with the next step there would be more, but she did find the sudden flush to Erik's ears in response to her movements amusing, if she was to tell the truth.

"So, you mentioned earlier that this whole thing is a rite of passage for grad students," Lucy said, biting into one of the gingerbread cookies Erik had nicked from the cafeteria when she was digging around for the vanilla extract. "How many people have you made eggnog with?"

"Nobody. The person who led me through my first grand-theft was some PhD candidate, I never took on a probie myself. Congrats, you're my first." Lucy choked on her drink. Judging by the twinkle in his eye, he knew  _damn_ well what kind of game he was playing.

Bastard. Adorable,  _annoying_ bastard.

"How'd I do?" She held her free hand out to her side. "Give me my final grade. Did I earn my white coat?"

"Well…" he eyed her critically. "Out of ten each...six-point-five for willingness to do the job, eight for effectiveness, seven-point-seventy-five for lab procedure, nine for participation...overall? Seven."

"Hey!" Lucy protested. "That doesn't even add up!"

"Grader's discretion." He shrugged nonchalantly. "But, hey, for what it's worth, that's the highest overall grade I've  _ever_ given out in my life."

"I feel  _so_ bad for your students when you were a GA."

"And a TA. And a PhD candidate. Eight glorious years of making people cry at all levels."

"Ha!" Lucy cheered. "I didn't cry  _once_!"

"Congrats, you've definitely earned your white coat then." Suddenly, his easy grin turned sharp. "How was your foray into the hard sciences, Miss Heartfilia? Finally ready to concede we have more fun here?"

"Listen, I'm standing next to something labeled a hydroxide and while I don't know if that's as bad as an acid, I'm ready to test it out on you. For science."

Lucy didn't know if it was the spiked eggnog or the sheer ridiculousness of the whole day that was piling up on her, but in that moment, Erik's laugh was the most beautiful thing she'd heard in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	7. Six Normal Swans (Plus One Psycho Swan)

Somewhere close to ten minutes ago, Lucy had lost all feeling in her eyeballs.

Eyeballs didn't even  _feel_ on a good day. If you blew on them they felt  _weird_ , yeah (especially from those machines at the optometrist's office), and they hurt like a fucking  _bitch_ when her mascara wand decided to go rogue, but never, in all her years on planet Earth, had Lucy ever lost feelings in her eyeballs because it was so cold outside.

How cold did it have to be for one to lose feeling in their eyeballs? Somewhere around -30 with the windchill.

-30 (or 243.15 Kelvin, as Erik would report it - the .15 was important no matter how many times people just used 273 as the conversion factor, according to him) had been the standard temperature for Crocus over the past week or so, and while  _most_ normal people heeded the city's Extreme Cold Weather Alert and stayed indoors with their heaters blaring and thermal socks on, Lucy, in all her infinite wisdom, had forgotten to pick up her prescription  _before_ the Hell Weather had dropped.

Thus, Lucy found herself doing a not-normal thing and waddled her way over to the pharmacy a couple blocks away, decked out in three layers of sweatpants, two sweaters, the puffiest coat she owned, and a pair of Natsu's heavy-duty gloves. The trip  _to_ the pharmacy was bearable, but the way back faced the wind and brought a kind of wind-whiplash that she'd only ever seen in reruns of Inuyasha with Kagura's fan.

"I'm gonna die," she wailed into her scarf, though it sounded a lot more like "amfunafyeeee" to those walking past her.

Would Erik actually stick her in a cryogenics lab when they found her frozen corpse? Could her body be salvaged enough to be deep freezed? Did they have to inject her full of special chemicals beforehand for it to work? Would she be shipped off to a cadaver lab for tired students to see what extreme cold did to the human body?  _Find out next time on 'Lucy, You're a Fucking Idiot',_ she groused to herself,  _if I live long enough for there to_ be  _a next time…_

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and it was only through the grace of whatever God was shining down upon her unfortunate ass that day that she managed to yank it out and squint at the message displayed on the screen.

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 4:52 PM**

_I can see you turning into a psychsicle outside, look left._

Seeing as her neck was immobilized by a thick scarf, Lucy shuffled her whole body to the left and peered through the window of what appeared to be one of many bars littering the street. It took about a minute for her eyes to adjust to the lighting before she spotted Erik seated at the counter, staring at her and waving his phone in the air. She looked down at hers again just in time for his next text to pop up.

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 4:54 PM**

_Cadaver lab or cryogenics...I'm starting to think cryo._

Lucy scowled as much as her frozen facial muscles would allow and hobbled her way into the bar, catching herself before she moaned in delight at the burst of heat across her skin - there was no way she would allow herself to be caught in one of his orgasm jokes again.

"Can you move," a droll voice came from her left side. Lucy jerked back and was met face to face with what could only be described as a MySpace time-traveller. He was a couple inches taller than her at most, but his slouch made him level with her height. Anaemic was the only way she could describe his sallow pallor and exhausted eyes, and the black hair that fell over his face only made the contrast that much starker. Honestly, he looked kind of like a zombie…

"Leave her alone, Macbeth, she's one foot in the cryo door already," Erik called from his seat. Lucy tilted her head and hummed. "You know, you  _do_ look like the kinda guy to pick up a skull and monologue for a few hours in a graveyard."

"...Hamlet. You're thinking of Hamlet." Macbeth gave her an odd look and made his way over to the spare stool beside Erik. Lucy tugged her scarf off and followed in suit, smiling as best she could despite the shivers that had suddenly gripped her. His casual flannel-and-jeans combo sent an odd thrum through her stomach; he looked  _illegally_ attractive, especially with his sleeves rolled up to bare his forearms and their tattoo.

 _Put on nothing put his shirt and ride him to oblivion,_ Inner Cana suggested crudely,  _he'd probably bust a nut just_ seeing  _you in it. Or maybe wrap yourself up in his lab coat and -_

"She's not wrong," Erik said, handing Lucy a beer and tugging at her jacket zipper. "Coat rack is in the back, just tell them to stick yours with mine."

* * *

When Lucy returned, half her beer drowned to calm her nerves, she found Erik seated at a large booth with six other people, Hamlet -  _Macbeth,_ she corrected - included.

"Right, people, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is people. Left to right is Macbeth, Sawyer, Richard, Kinana, and Sorano."

Lucy perked up at the second-last name, eyeing Kinana with interest. "Hey, I think I know you! You GA'd for one of my courses in first year!"

Kinana pursed her lips and tilted her head thoughtfully. She snapped her fingers after a beat. "Social Psychology! With Azuma! You used to sit front row and interrupt the lecture every ten minutes with a question about some obscure margin in the text."

Lucy flushed and ducked her head, careful to keep her gaze focused on the label of her bottle and not Erik's suddenly amused face. It wasn't  _her_ fault she was a keener; she'd heard absolutely nightmarish things about Azuma's midterms and wanted to ensure she wouldn't make stupid mistakes that would cost her a 4.0. Granted, it was also partially because she was a naturally curious soul, driven to research and the human condition, but it was still embarrassing being pointed out as  _that kid_.

"You remind me of Erik, actually!" Kinana laughed, pressing a hand to her cheek and staring at the aforementioned man affectionately. "He would actually  _correct_ our organic chemistry professor when he found mistakes in the lecture slides. You're both very sharp people, I see why you get along so well."

"He also used to correct tests, eh?" Sawyer poked Erik in the ribs. "Fuck, you remember when that  _bitch_ of a TA docked you a full five marks 'cause of some dumbass rounding error and you went in to appeal the grade and pointed out that your answer was right 'cause they fucked up the question?"

"It was your love of chemistry that drove you to passionately defend your marks!" Richard exclaimed firmly. Lucy was somewhat disturbed to see  _floating sparkly hearts_ surrounding his head, but the rest of the group seemed to take it in stride. Perhaps this was normal for him?

"Except he got a 95% on that test," Macbeth chimed from where his head was cushioned in his arms. "Didn't  _need_ the five marks."

"Oh, shut your whore mouth," Erik said with a roll of his eye. "Like you didn't threaten Stinger within an inch of his life if he didn't bump your 99% to a 100% for your quantum physics two final."

For once, it wasn't the alcohol that had her head spinning.  _95%? 100%?_ How fucking smart were Erik and his friends? She knew he had some next level brains, but this sudden glimpse into the depth of his intelligence was somewhat terrifying. She swept her gaze over the group, registering a cloak of power that she hadn't seen before. It was  _stifling_. Compared to them...where did she stand? They were  _leagues_ ahead of her, with such raw talent and understanding of the world that next to them she felt like  _nothing_. She quickly took a swig to her beer to flush down the sudden thickness that built up in her chest, relishing in the bitter taste on her tongue.

She looked over at Erik and was taken back by how animated he was. His one free hand was waving in the air, illustrating some point he was making, and his face was as teasing and relaxed as it had ever been. There it was - that fundamental difference she had thought he was looking for with her and Erza and Natsu and Gray. Had  _she_ looked this at home with them? Did the atmosphere around her bubble with deep levels of comfort and trust? Had he felt this same pang of longing as was running through her right now?

Had he wanted it to be the same way with her?

 _You'll never know if you keep waiting for him to make the first move_ , Inner Cana whispered, subdued for once.

"So, Lucy," Sorano drawled, speaking for the first time. "We're probably all positively  _boring_ you with our school-days anecdotes. Tell us about yourself. We've been  _dying_ to learn all about you, ever since Erik here told us who you were."

"She's a soft-science," Erik sighed dramatically. The group collectively laughed at that, leaving Lucy feeling like she'd missed out on some kind of inside joke.

Tugging at her sleeves self-consciously, she began, "I'm a psychology major at the U-"

"Ah, the passable soft-science," Sawyer said.

"At least she's not a sociology student," Macbeth muttered.

"Now, now, boys, don't tease poor Lucy here about the fact that she's not some robotic STEM like you. I minored in psychology myself, you know," Sorano said. Her glossy lips pulled up into a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, sending a brief shiver down Lucy's spine.

"That's so cool! What did you major in?"

"Law," she replied. "I'm a prosecutor for the attorney-general's office."

"Sorano's the only humanities in our group," Richard explained. "It brings a special kind of love between us all!"

"What did you major in, Richard?" Lucy asked.

"Geology!" He puffed up proudly. "I'm a seismologist now. My love for the subject is such that I plan on returning to pursue my PhD and share my love with undergraduate students as I do so!"

"That's  _awesome_!"

"Sawyer here majored in automotive engineering and now helps design race-cars," Richard added. Sawyer grinned. "The best part is test-driving them."

"Macbeth majored in physics and is currently finishing up his PhD in the matter."

"And CERN is already hounding his ass," Erik interjected proudly. "Our little Midnight, all grown up and ready to fall asleep in the Large Hadron Collider instead of on top of microscopes."

Macbeth (or Midnight, she supposed) threw a half-assed middle finger in the air.

"Kinana majored in chemistry and works in the university research labs while debating finishing up  _her_ PhD," Erik said pointedly. Kinana blushed, scowling. "Excuse me if I don't feel ready to defend my thesis in front of a panel of scary old men!"

"Is...is there anyone at this table  _without_ a PhD?" Lucy laughed nervously.

"Sawyer  _would_ have gotten his, but he landed a pretty sweet job when doing his Master's, so...Sorano, I guess," Erik replied.

"Don't worry,  _princess_ ," Sorano purred, and Lucy stiffened, feeling Erik tense a little at her side as well. "You and I are in the same boat."

"Oi, Sora-" Lucy placed her hand on his thigh and shook her head discreetly. If Erik could put up with Erza threatening him with a knife, she could put up with being called princess no matter how much it grated on her nerves. A part of her was flattered by his immediate jump to defend her, especially when he had no real idea why she hated it so much.

"Good to know I have an ally here," Lucy said with a smile.

"Indeed. What do you plan on doing with your degree, then?" Sorano asked suddenly, her eyes as razor sharp as her manicured nails.

"I...well...m-maybe a psychologist? Or psychiatrist? I don't...really know," the blonde mumbled, placing the lip of her empty beer bottle to her mouth, suddenly uncertain. She could feel Erik's burning gaze on the side of her skull, but her eyes were firmly fixed on Sorano's cold blue ones.

She'd known for a long time that psychology was  _her thing_. Growing up in the kind of environment she had, Lucy knew first hand just how to say the right thing to get someone talking, and she could read body language like it was second-nature. But she didn't want to use that knowledge to expand the Heartfilia empire; instead, she wanted to do what Igneel did when she was at her worst - give her a friend to talk to who also knew just what to say to make everything okay.

Faced down with all these hyper-geniuses, suddenly her dreams seemed like a blip in the radar compared to theirs.

"Psychiatry requires an M.D.," Sorano pointed out. "Have you taken the pre-reqs?"

"Um, I did the biology units in first year but I've been putting off chemistry for a while now. I was thinking I'd take it next year," Lucy said.

"Good thing Erik's around to help you," Richard said, brightening. "His love for the subject will surely infect you!"

"I'm sure that's not the kind of love she's after, Richard," Sorano said coolly, eyeing Lucy with barely hidden contempt. " _If_ that's what she's after. She wouldn't be the first to see a PhD and think dollar bills."

" _Sorano_ ," Erik snapped, pushing his bottle to his side. The part of her mind that wasn't roiling with anger and mortification realized that this put his arm in front of her in a makeshift shield.

"What? I'm just being honest, Erik. You trust people way too easily."

"Sorano, that's going a little too far," Kinana murmured, placing her hand on the lawyer's shoulder. "Lucy helped Erik after his accident. She's a friend, not a defendant."

"A little sacrifice for a large payoff," Sorano said.

"Can you chill for a second?" Macbeth piped up. "Seriously, Angel, what's gotten into you?"

"I'm looking out for the interests of my  _best friend_ ," Sorano sneered. Her silver hair shimmered under the dull lighting of the bar, painting her face with an eerie glow. She really  _did_ look like the angel she was named after: beautiful and full of vengeance.

"I'm gonna go get a refill or something," Lucy bit out as calmly as she could, using the table to stand up steadily. Erik's hand shot out, tightening around her wrist. His brow was furrowed in concern, but she shook both it and his hand off with a smile. "I'll be back soon! Just need something a little fruitier."

She headed off to the bar, missing Erik's snarled, "Sorano, what the  _fuck_ ," by a mere second.

* * *

"Miss Heartfilia, of all the students I have had, you are perhaps the last I would have suspected of drinking yourself silly during exam season," Professor Mard Geer said smoothly as he slid into the stool next to her. Lucy jerked up, sloshing her martini over her arms. As she scrambled for a napkin, Mard procured a handkerchief and extended it to her.

"Thank you, sir. Um, sorry, I just…" she met his unyielding eyes and sighed. "I've had a long day."

"Haven't we all," he replied, signalling the bartender. "However, not all of us choose to drown our sorrows in alcohol. I would have thought you wiser than this."

"Why are  _you_ here?" she countered.

"They  _do_ serve actual food here," he said just as Mirajane Strauss swept by and placed a BLT in front of him.

"Mard, you're late," she whined, though even  _that_ sounded like a soprano's clear pitch. Mirajane was nothing short of angelic. Soprano, Sorano. Angelic, Angel. There went two more words from her vocabulary straight into the 'uncomfortable associations' box.

"Apologies, Mira. Mr Eucliffe would not cease bargaining over his last essay grade," Mard said. Lucy perked up at the subtle softening of his face as he stared at Mira, who looked just as taken as he was.

 _Oh, hell_ , Lucy thought just as Inner Cana crowed,  _They're fucking!_

"Ah, Sting. Never change." Spotting Lucy, Mira clapped her hands together and smiled broadly. "Lucy! What a surprise! I didn't even see you here."

"Ah, yeah, Lisanna got me this." Lucy held up her empty glass. "Er, Mira, mind if I get something...stronger? Like…really strong."

Mard and Mira exchanged mildly concerned glances. Lucy huffed, placing her glass down firmly and sitting up. Sorano's words pounded through her head in time with her heartbeat, building up behind her eyeballs and pressing hard. She wanted wanted something to shut it  _up_. Alcohol headaches were bearable compared to the cruel implications that she had been  _using Erik_ for his wallet. Just the thought of it had her reeling. She was  _Lucy fucking Heartfilia_ , the heiress to the fucking Heartfilia Konzern and the immense wealth that came with it. Living on her own and fending for herself was a personal choice. She had no need for Erik's money.

Her eyes pricked even as she rapidly blinked back tears. Emotions were so  _fickle_. She'd always hated studying them because sometimes they were illogical beyond belief. She was  _angry_ and  _frustrated_  and she  _should_  have wanted to pin Sorano to the wall and tell her, in no uncertain terms, that all she wanted out of Erik was his friendship ( _love_ ). But what she  _felt_ like doing was curling into a ball and sobbing until she fell asleep.

"Lucy," Mira said gently, plucking the glass out of her hand and unfurling it. "What's wrong?"

"I don't get it," her voice cracked. "Erik gets along just fine with my friends. He and Natsu argue a lot but they don't hate each other. Why can't...why can't I be like that with his friends? Why does Sorano hate me so much?"

"Miss Heartfilia…" Mard's tone was distinctly uncomfortable with having to deal with an emotional woman. If Lucy was about her wits she would have been ashamed of breaking down like this in front of her former English professor, but she couldn't find it in her to care.

"I don't think she hates you," Mira said, "I think she's just...scared at the thought of having to share Erik."

"Scared at the thought of me digging for his wallet," Lucy mumbled. What on Earth did Sorano have to be scared for? Erik and her went back  _years_ and it was clear that they cared for one another. Lucy could never get in the middle of that and she didn't want to.

Another thought struck her - did Sorano have a  _thing_ for Erik, too?

As if reading her mind, Mard shrugged. "It is entirely possible Ms Aguira may harbour affections for Dr Vivas, however I doubt it. If I remember it correctly, theirs has always been a familial relationship. Ms Aguira is merely incredibly defensive in regards to her friends, much like yourself."

"You know them?" Lucy wiped at her eyes as quickly as she could. Mira procured a glass of water seemingly out of thin air and passed it on to her.

"I was a Master's student when their group were completing their undergraduate degree. They all took an English course I was a graduate assistant for at the time. Ms Aguira was an exemplary student, however she kept her social circle small and strived to keep it that way." Mard's lips turned down ever so slightly. "It always did amaze me the lengths she went to to keep people away from their group."

"Meaning?" Lucy asked.

"Ms Aguira would ensure to seat herself at the end of the row to prevent others from filing in to finish the rest of it, and when it came time to do group work, it was assumed the six of them would work together. She had a difficult time permitting splintering," Mard said. He toyed with the toothpick jammed into his sandwich, eyes far away. "We always did wonder how she dealt with then making friends in other classes."

"She sounds awfully possessive," Mira commented. "Mostly scared of losing them to others. It's sad but no excuse to treat you the way she did."

"I concur," Mard said, fully turning his body to face Lucy. "Miss Heartfilia, you were one of my brightest students and I am fully aware that you are capable of standing up for yourself. I understand that this is a novel situation for you, however you are not one to bend over and allow someone to trample over you. I will be extremely disappointed if, when she confronts you next, you do not make your ire known."

If there was one thing Lucy had always admired about the cold English professor, it was his ability to compliment someone and somehow still sound dissatisfied with them. She took a sip of water and marveled over how it flowed down her throat effortlessly. The thickness in her chest was still there, but she could breathe through it.

"Lucy." Erik's deep voice had her heart stuttering all over again, but Mira's small hands tightened around hers and Lucy felt herself calm down enough to look up at him. The toxicologist wore a carefully blank expression and held himself as casually as possible, but there was no fooling her - she could see the tenseness in his shoulders and the slow grind of his jaw as he struggled to hold back whatever it was he was feeling. When he spotted Mira and Mard, he straightened up and allowed a scowl to take over.

"Dr Geer," Erik said. Lucy's eyebrows shot up and she wheeled around to face the man. " _Doctor_? Oh my god, when did you get your PhD?!"

"I was awarded my title last week," Mard said primly. "Although I would prefer it if we simply stuck to Professor Geer. Dr Geer sounds odd coming out of your mouth."

"Are you kidding me? I'm never gonna shut up about this! I'm so happy for you, Dr Geer! Would you mind telling me what journal published your thesis so I can read it? This is amazing!" Lucy leaned over to pull Mard into a messy hug, breathing into his unruly hair. "I'm gonna take another one of your classes just to celebrate!"

" _Miss Heartfilia_ ," Mard hissed just quietly enough that only she could hear, "If this were any other occasion I may have permitted this...blatant act of affection, however your  _friend_  and I do not get along on a good day, and today is almost certainly  _not a good day_."

Lucy pulled back, craning her neck back even as she twisted in her seat. Erik's scowl had grown more pronounced, darkening the violet of his eye. Even in the beginning, back when they had first met and he had tried his best to get rid of her, he had never looked so  _mean_. Her own lips drew back in a frown at that. What right did he have to get so pissy at her? She'd known Mard longer than him and was damn well within her rights to hug him even if the two were bitter rivals. After everything his  _best friend_ had just pulled, too!

 _If I have to put up with her hating me, he can put up with me being friends with Mard,_ Lucy thought.

"Can we talk for a sec?" Erik turned his attention back to her, easing up despite himself. She hesitated, and that was all it took for Mira to sweep in and place her hands on her shoulders, shoving her lightly. Lucy stumbled forward, managing to stop herself from barrelling into the toxicologist's chest by only half a foot. Again, she was taken aback by how  _warm_ he was, even at a distance. With the packed club and high heating, it was almost  _too_ warm. She took another sip of her water and exhaled into the glass shakily.

"Remember what we said, Lucy," Mira chirped, pinning her frosty eyes on Erik. "And you. If Lucy looks even a little bit uncomfortable, it won't be Elfman coming around to drag you away, hm?"

Erik grabbed the hand that wasn't currently ready to shatter the glass, huffing. "What is  _with_ you and making friends with people who wanna kill me?" he complained. Privately, Lucy wondered the same. Mira and Mard's words echoed in the back of her mind, but she found herself wondering what she would have said if Natsu had acted like that with Erik. Berating him for being rude was definitely at the top of her list, but what about after? What could she say to Erik to make up for it all?

He pulled her into a small nook at the end of the bar, where the music wasn't as loud and the most she could feel was the thrum of the bass beneath her feet. If she stood on her toes, she could just make out Mard's messy hair over the crowd. That was  _one_ escape route if this all went to absolute shit.

"I'm sorry for what Sorano said," Erik finally said. His hand dropped from her wrist to twine with her fingers, rubbing his thumb up and down. "It was way out of line."

"Yeah, it was," Lucy said. She chewed on the corner of her lip as she mulled over her next sentence. "Did I say something to offend her? Or does she just not like my being a, uh…'soft-science'?"

"No!" His grip tightened. "No, that...that's just us being stupid. Sorry."

"You sure are apologizing a lot," she said, her tone bordering teasing. "If I were a psychiatrist I'd be taking you in for some brain imaging to check for tumours."

"I'm saying sorry because she won't. She's looking out for me. Well, she  _thinks_ she is. She's been my friend for a long time but…" Erik trailed off, his mouth opening as if he was going to finish, but he froze, exhaling instead. His free hand went up to rub at his forehead. "This is stupid," he muttered, "Sorano needs to get her shit together."

"Dr Geer was just telling me that he remembers you all from your time in undergrad."

Erik snorted. "Yeah, I remember him, too. Annoying fuck went extra hard on us."

"He was telling me that he remembers her as well," Lucy chose her next words carefully, "She seems to have...attachment issues."

"He's right, I do," Sorano spoke up from behind her. Lucy whipped around and stepped back, bumping into Erik's chest in surprise. His hand fell to her shoulder, holding her in place.

"Sorano," Erik warned, "I told you to stay at the table."

"You're not my keeper. Lucy and I need to talk. Alone." She looked at him pointedly.

Lucy kept her eyes focused on Mard's bushy head, hoping her  _come bail me out!_ signals would somehow transmit from her brain to his. Just being within a foot of Sorano had her hackles rising defensively, every inch of her screaming  _run, bitch, run!_

"No," Erik replied, just as pointed. As if to emphasize that, he pulled her closer to his chest. His heart thudded steadily against her back, every one beat of his matching two of hers. For once, Lucy wished Inner Cana would pop out, say something lewd, and distract her enough that she didn't have to deal with the sensory overload that was  _her crush was that close_ and  _her crush's psycho best friend was that close, too._

"That's not up to us is it?" Sorano stared at Lucy. "Well?"

A  _fuck no_ almost escaped her lips, held back only by her earlier discussion. Mard had told her to stand up for herself, and Mira…

Well, Mira had said something that had her inner psychologist sniffing at the air like a bloodhound. Sorano was  _scared_ of losing them to others. There was some deep attachment there that Lucy would never understand, but if she was right - and she often  _was_ \- then part of what Sorano would say next would tie into that. Understanding was the first step to making amends with anyone, and while Lucy wasn't sure if it was forgiveness Sorano was looking for, she knew that  _understanding_ had to be established between the two.

"Okay," Lucy agreed, prying Erik's hand off her shoulder and shooting him a reassuring smile that did nothing to ease the tension that gripped him. "I'll be fine, don't worry. We'll be close."

His eye flicked from her to Sorano and back. "Sorano...don't be a bitch."

She pressed a hand to her chest in exaggerated offense. "That's such a fundamental aspect of my personality! No can do. She'll live, no worries. Now  _scram_."

Erik squeezed her hand one last time before disappearing in the throng of bodies. She watched as his maroon head bobbed towards the bar and paused by...Mard?

"They'll snark while we talk," Sorano dismissed them with a wave. "Now, I owe you an explanation."

"Yeah, but you don't have to-"

She held a hand up. "Shut it for a second. You're right, I  _am_ protective of my friends. Extremely so. We've been through everything together. Grew up in the same shithole, survived the constant flow back and forth between our homes and the foster system, and you of all people should know the kind of bond that forms, psychologically speaking."

 _Foster system._ Erik had been a part of the foster system. Everybody at that  _table_ had. Her mouth ran dry and her heart clenched uncomfortably as everything she knew about the foster system from her classes rose to the forefront of her mind. The abuse, the neglect...the scars they left behind even years later.

"Yeah," she croaked. "Yeah, I do."

"We're not children. We're over it. Don't treat us any differently or start using that psychology shit to 'adjust' or whatever," Sorano's tone was haughty and her posture as relaxed as could be, but even she couldn't hide the minute adjustments she made to close herself off: her arms crossed over her chest, body angled towards the door, and tapping foot. The amount of stress she was putting herself under just to share this, daring Lucy to judge her, was phenomenal.

"I wouldn't. Ever," Lucy swore, and she meant it. Erik was  _Erik_ , and even if the past was important, the present was moreso. They'd found a comfortable rhythm in one another, and she wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that.

"Good. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make here is that I'm a protective bitch because I refuse to let people walk over my friends like they used to. People see Erik's success and that's all they want out of him. They refuse to take in the ugly bits, and if you want him, you take him all. Do you hear me?" she said sharply. "He's moody, rude, and he speaks sarcasm more than he does English. He can be more caustic than the chemicals he works with, but underneath it all, he's-"

"Kind and caring. In his own way, of course, but...I'm slowly learning to understand him. I think I'm doing okay," Lucy licked her lips before saying, "And...I want to get to know his friends, too. This means you, Sorano. You're his precious people and I think it's important to befriend you all."

She waited for the scoff to come, but instead Sorano laughed. "This will make the second non-science in our group. I suppose this makes us allies."

Lucy matched her smile with one of her own. "I'd like that. Let's start again, hm? I'm Lucy. It's nice to meet you."

"Sorano. I think you and I will get along just fine."

* * *

"Hey, Sorano didn't kill Lucy!" Sawyer shouted as they approached, each bearing a fruity cocktail. Sorano slid in next to Kinana and leaned over to stab Sawyer with the pointy end of her mini-umbrella. "We came to an agreement."

"You good?" Erik murmured in her ear as she took her spot beside him. His arm rested behind her seat, a scant few centimeters above her shoulders. Lucy took a sip of her drink and smiled. "Yeah. Sorano told me...a lot. We decided to become non-science allies."

"Good to know." His lips curled up into one of his rare true smiles. Her fingers itched to rest in the small dimples on his cheeks, so she focused on twirling her straw, spelling out the longest words she knew.

"Is that Mard?" Macbeth asked, eyes barely visible over his arms. "We should go say hi."

"We don't even have a prank ready for him!" Sawyer complained. "Ugh, Richard? Got anything?"

"Mard Geer will slap you all with a harassment charge so lengthy your grandchildren will be serving it," Sorano sneered. "Don't be children."

"Honestly," Lucy sighed, exchanging a look with Sorano. "This is such a  _hard-sciences_ thing to do."

"Rushing into situations without thinking first? Definitely," Sorano said sagely. "Tsk, tsk."

"...did you just  _soft-sciences_ us?" Kinana gaped. "I-"

"This means war!" Richard declared. "A war of passion!"

A heavy arm dropped around her shoulders. "I regret introducing you two," Erik groaned. "Now all my fun jokes are gone."

Boldly, she leaned into him. "You have time to come up with new material. I'm not going anywhere."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	8. 7 Maids, 1 Princess, and a Doctor

"Lucy, why the  _fuck_  is the tupperware of brownies labeled radioactive?"

"'Cause Erik's a moron," the blonde deadpanned, entering the kitchen and depositing their dirty dishes in the sink. "He came down in an absolute  _tizzy_ at six this morning because he stuck a bunch of chemicals in his fridge and forgot, so when he made the brownies in the morning he had no place to chill them. The radioactive sticker is supposed to scare me, but…" she stuck her hand in her sweater pocket and extracted a ream of bright yellow stickers with 'radioactive' stamped across in chunky black letters. "I found them in his briefcase. He finds joy in trying to terrify me."

Cana Alberona cocked an eyebrow and raised her bottle of wine in a mock salute. "You're dating a keeper, Lucy."

"We aren't  _dating_." She scowled, snatching the bottle from Cana and taking a swing. The bitter tannins of the wine swept over her tongue, and her nose wrinkled in response. Erik had spent a whole evening explaining the chemistry behind wine ("I did a stint in a brewery during my undergrad. I also spent that stint so piss drunk I couldn't see straight for  _time_.") and she was disgusted to find she still half remembered his drunken rambles. Wasn't that a thing couples did? Remembered the stupid shit the other person liked even if they'd had no prior experience in the subject area? She tipped the bottle back once again and swallowed both the wine and the stupid questions bubbling in her throat. If she had thought Inner Cana was a nightmare and a half, real-life Cana was  _two_  damn nightmares that she did  _not_ need psychoanalyzing her.

"Uh-huh." Cana snagged the bottle back and dropped the matter. "Are you still down to help out with that 'ye olde age' reenactment thing? 'Cause we're missing our eighth milkmaid."

"Yeah, don't see why not. Costumes are provided, right?"

"Yup. And if Erik comes along, he gets to see you tug on some teets. Teets look like dicks. This whole Freudian shit will take place and then he'll finally take you to bed!"

"You come into my house, sit under my roof, and you speak Freud's name? This? This is sacrilege."

* * *

"You know, the last time we were this close to a cow was in Fitz's twelfth grade bio class dissecting cow eyeballs," Lucy mused aloud as she struggled to find the arm holes of her dress. That the 'change-room' she was currently inhabiting was roughly the size of a porta-potty stall - and it damn right smelled like one, too - was only the tip of the glorious, shit-covered iceberg she was crashing into.

When Cana had offered her the position, Lucy had initially figured that a few hours spent tugging on cow boobs for milk was well worth the money she would be making in return - it was just enough to help cover next month's rent, and she was never one to turn down rent money. What Cana had  _conveniently_  forgotten to mention was that the person running the reenactment was a stickler for details, which meant that the dress she was given had the texture of a flour sack and the collective insulation of three whole layers of tulle. The apron she had been given would likely add one more layer, but the frostbite was inevitable.

"Let's hope that the whole karma cycle thing doesn't come to completion and the cow you gotta milk doesn't break your ribs to honour her fifth cousin or whatever," Cana called from her own stall. "You done yet?"

"I found the head-hole, so we're making progress here. Wait!" Lucy yelled triumphantly as she stuck her left arm through its sleeve. "Found a sleeve! I might actually get my shit together in the next three hours!"

"Sure, Jan."

With the dress now on and properly adjusted, Lucy took a minute to glance down and take it in. It was fitted a little too tightly around her bust and hung somewhat loosely around her waist, but she supposed that couldn't be avoided. The dress was a rather ugly shade of pale blue, but the white apron did a decent job of hiding most of it. With a final pat down, she grabbed the weird little hat she'd been given and exited the porta-potty.

"I don't know how to put this thing on, wanna give me a hand?" She held it out to Cana, who made quick work of tying onto Lucy's head. The brunette wheeled her around and tilted her head in a scrutinizing manner. "Eh, you don't look hideous. Where's your shawl?"

"We get  _shawls_?"

"Yeah, dude, it's like, negative a billion degrees out. I mean, nobody would be complaining if they saw your nips through the dress but I figured you wouldn't be too pleased if the twin peaks looked ready to fight the next world war with a bayonet. Unless you wanna show 'em off to certain doctor whose name makes me think of hot sex up against a wall…" a crude grin split Cana's lips as she slung an arm over Lucy's shoulders. "Oh, man, you should ride him in one of the stables!"

Lucy sputtered, lost for words. A thousand rebuttals came to her tongue -  _public indecency, that's so unhygenic, we could get arrested, I'm not fucking Erik in a cow stable, I'm not fucking Erik_ period - but all that she managed to squeak out over the sound of blood rushing in her ears was, " _Ew_!"

"You say that now, but when he's got you pinned to the-"

"Oh, hey, look at the time, gotta go milk a cow, see ya!"

* * *

The first thing Lucy registered as she stepped into the barn was the overwhelming scent of bullshit. Literal, honest to god bullshit. Bile rose up her throat and she desperately swallowed it back. The last thing she needed was the stench of her own upchuck culminating with the bullshit for a sensory overload.

Rationally, she knew that olfactory fatigue would probably go by easier the more readily she kept breathing, but her lungs kept forcefully expelling what little she managed to inhale to keep them clean. She slapped a hand over her nose and mouth and breathed in deeply through a tiny slit between her fingers. The smell was still acrid and she was half-ready to bolt out the door, but it was more manageable than before.

"It'll get easier once somebody comes around to clean up the poop," a woman by one of the stalls said sympathetically. She wore an outfit similar to Lucy's and kept her thick brown hair pinned up in an elaborate French twist. "Are you the eighth milkmaid?"

"Yeah," Lucy managed to choke out. "I'm Lucy."

"Nice to meet you! Name's Millianna, I'll get you set up over here." She crooked her finger and made her way over to a stall at the very back of the barn. "You got a pretty good spot, Lucy! Once the sun starts setting it hits your stall and you get the pretty orange glow! I hope your shawl is heavy, though, it gets  _super_ chilly back here. Oh, and your cow is an absolute  _sweetie_ , her name is Helena. Your stall is next to Minerva's, by the way. She's a bit catty, but she grows on you. Kinda like fungus!"

"I resent the catty remark," Minerva deadpanned from where she was seated on a stool next to her cow. "Stop bothering the newbie, Millianna, you need to go and find someone to clear up the shit before we all catch ."

"You can't catch like that, can you?" Millianna turned to Lucy, who shrugged delicately. This was most definitely  _not_ her area of expertise. She made a mental note to ask Erik when they got home that night.

 _Oh? Whose place counts as home?_ Inner Cana cooed. Lucy scowled and stomped over to her stall, making sure to inhale deeply as she did so. The stench quickly overtook her senses, drowning out whatever Inner Cana was about to say next.

"Have you ever milked a cow?" Millianna asked.

"No, but I watched some YouTube videos on it," Lucy replied. The other woman nodded and knelt down next to the cow's udders, grasping a hold of one in each hand. "So the trick is to not squeeze one all the time before moving on to the next. Alternate. Also, hold them at a bit of an angle and tug firmly. You'll figure out the pressure needed with some practice. You only need to milk her when people come in, and I do most of the talking anyway so you don't need to worry if they start asking about history and all that."

"So what do I do when there's no people here?"

"Groom her! We have some nice brushes here. They love getting groomed, so it'll help build up some more trust between you two." Millianna held up both her thumbs. "We good then?"

"Sounds good to me." Lucy smiled. Millianna waved cheerfully and strutted out of the barn purposefully, leaving Lucy to turn around and gingerly touch Helena's smooth coat of hair. "We're gonna have a blast, aren't we?"

Helena moo'd.

* * *

Statistically speaking, cows killed roughly twenty-two people per year.

It was easy enough to image how difficult it would be for a police officer to go to someone's home and tell them that their loved one was dead. Knock on the door, look morose, 'I regret to inform you of Billy-Bob's passing', and then awkwardly comfort the grieving spouse until they ask how it happened between sobs. If there was ever a time that Lucy wanted to be a fly on the wall, it would be for each of those twenty-two cases where the officer had to steel themselves, look those watery eyes dead on, and say 'Billy-Bob was killed by a cow'.

The thing is, when statistics like these were reported they often forgot to report the background - that is, how in the eternal hell did Billy-Bob manage to get himself six feet under by old Betsy the Milk Cow? If someone were to go up to a stranger on the street and say 'did you know that cows kill about twenty-two people per year?' the chances of that stranger immediately thinking of Betsy doing the macarena on top of Billy-Bob were ridiculously high. The reality is, there were a million confounding variables to consider, first and foremost being 'what the fuck did Billy-Bob do to piss off poor Betsy so much that she had to cave in his chest cavity?'

Lucy had to wonder how many of those twenty-two people had a) been killed because their milking skills were non-existent and b) because of sheer exhaustion.

Milking was fucking hard. Really, really hard, and Minerva had the audacity to look  _bored_ as she went about her job.

Lucy, on the other hand, was dying.

At first it wasn't so bad. The burn that had started in her biceps and wrists was manageable up until hour two of her captivity, at which point she felt as though she had just bench pressed the equivalent of two Laxus's stacked on top of one another. By hour three, her shoulders and upper back were so tight that coal would likely spontaneously become to diamonds if they were placed between her shoulder blades. Hour four had her upper abdomen clenching and her arms almost fully numb, and by the time the sun had started to set, Lucy was certain that if somebody dismembered her she wouldn't be able to feel it. There were probably enough endorphins coursing through her veins to cultivate and then derive morphine from to supply a surgical ward for the next ten years.

"You look like death warmed over," Sorano said cheerfully.

"I think I broke all my bones," Lucy mumbled, only just managing to turn her head over to acknowledge her presence. "I'm gonna die of acute stress in the middle of the night."

"You're just being dramatic," Sorano waved her off. "Speaking of drama, have you seen Erik around? I know that slimy little snake is hiding somewhere."

"No. Why is he hiding? Did you try and confiscate his hip flask or something?"

"No, his royal acid reflux is trying to avoid his job. There's a production of Twelfth Night going on at nine tonight and he was cast as Orsino."

"And by cast you mean…"

"...voluntold."

Lucy rolled her eyes and flexed her fingers, her mind elsewhere. Erik in a play. Erik, her caustic, 'liberal arts are the devil's creation, STEM or bust', 'I have one emotion and it's cocky' neighbour ( _boyfriend,_ Inner Cana stressed) in a play. Just the thought of him in leggings and a poofy shirt was too much for her pain addled brain to handle.

"Why don't you go check out the pharmacy or whatever the equivalent is here?" Lucy suggested. "He's probably mixing together ancient plants to get some modern day drug that gets you high so he can avoid play duties."

"Twenty bucks says it's meth," Sorano called over her shoulder.

"Thirty says he's found a way to synthesize THC," Lucy yelled back, watching as she exited the barn into the quickly dimming light outside.

"You both lose. I'll take the fifty."

Lucy screeched and Helena let out an affronted moo.

Erik rose from under a pile of hay stacked in the corner like he was Dracula, ready to take on the night and exsanguinate a couple dozen people for fun. While Lucy fought to keep her erratically beating heart from boxing its way out of her ribcage, he picked bits of hay out of his hair and off his face without ever breaking eye contact. She swore that once she could remember how to move her appendages, she would use her newly developed biceps muscles to cold clock the smirk off his face. Maybe give him another concussion, just so Dr Kaur could chew him out again.

"You're an ass," she gasped, pressing a hand to her chest shakily.

"And you have no faith in me," Erik replied. "I mean, seriously? THC? Meth? I'm much more creative and not nearly as self-destructive as you make me look."

"Hiding in what amounts to an oversized porta potty for cows is your idea of genius? Does the CDC accept PhD's printed in crayon?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember you being this sarcastic, blondie. I'm rubbing off on you."

"Unfortunately, I don't seem to have rubbed off on you  _at all_." Immediately, she pressed a hand to her mouth. Regret in T-minus three, two, one…

"I seem to remember a lot of rubbing during the Olympics," Erik said. "But if you wanted to rub off on me then I'm not complaining."

Lucy dipped her hand into the bucket of milk under Helena and scooped up a handful, throwing it at Erik. Only about half managed to reach him and sully his shoes. The toxicologist picked up a handful of hay and gently dabbed at the wet spot, shaking his head mockingly. "Your aim is shit."

"The state of my toilet after you used it the other day says the same about you," Lucy grumbled. "I'm putting a bullseye sticker in it next time."

"Just for that, I'm gonna waffle stomp in your shower."

"I will kill you. I will kill you so dead."

"Whatever you say, Liam Neeson."

Lucy wiped her hands dry with the bottom of her skirt and set about rubbing the tension out of her upper shoulders and neck. Her friend Juvia, a third year kinesiology major, had taught her a few self-massaging techniques back when they had endured their first round of university exams together and while she had forgotten the more "deep-tissue" ones, she had a vague enough recollection of just what knots to press to tackle the problem until she could find a hot shower to fix the rest.

Slowly, she pressed her thumbs into the curve of her neck and drew them upwards, digging into the base of her skull. She swept her thumbs around under her ears and back down to her neck, pressing hard and repeating the upwards motion. In the back of her mind, she could hear Juvia reminding her to maintain a relaxed posture - a lot of the tension could be released simply by dropping the shoulders and unclenching the jaw. Doing so, Lucy felt her chest grow a little lighter and her shoulders start to unwind. It was easy to lose herself as she forcibly relaxed her body, muscle by muscle. The conscious effort it took pulled her in and drowned out all other thought, until there was only her and the odd static of  _nothingness._

Lucy's lungs spasmed as Erik's fingers took over, pushing hers away.

"You really need to hit the gym," he murmured in her ear, moving his thumbs down to the area between her spine and shoulder blades. "You'll get used-" he pressed down hard and dragged down, eliciting a moan from her. "To the burn."

"Maybe," she gasped, squeezing her eyes shut as he ran over a spot that had her seeing stars, "I like the burn."

She could almost feel him rolling his eye at her, but every hard press of his thumbs against her back, moving against the curve of her shoulder blades and tracing the dips beneath, made it harder and harder for her to string together a coherent thought. His hands drifted to the side, more centered to her shoulder blades, and he began rubbing small circles, inching upwards every few seconds.

"How are you this good with your hands?" Lucy managed to ask. She couldn't help how she started sagging back towards him. It was almost as if she was a marionette and he was snipping every string that kept her tied to Earth. Every stroke had her feeling lighter and looser than before, and it wouldn't be long before she would find herself draped over his chest in a pile of goo.

"Practice. You pick things up when working late nights hunched over a desk." His voice was the final layer of heat needed to throw her over the edge. Her neck fell back just as he rubbed a circle into the base of her skull, and she forced her heavy lids to slide open.

She couldn't pinpoint his expression. It was blank. Too carefully blank. Her honey eyes bore into his dark violet, taking in the sudden tightness around it. When she opened her mouth ever so slightly to breathe, she saw it.

Every person had a tell. It didn't matter if they were as stoic as Macbeth or as exuberant as Natsu, there was always something - a twitch, a tic, a fidget - that gave them away. What the tell was for depended entirely on the situation and in that moment, when she saw the muscle in his jaw jump, Lucy  _knew_.

 _Lust_.

Time seemed to suspend itself in their little pocket of existence. The world could have gone through a whole Ice Age outside and they wouldn't have noticed. The only things she could focus on were the unconscious strokes of Erik's thumbs against her neck and the million shades of purple in his eye.

 _You can do it, you know,_ Inner Cana whispered.  _Kiss him. Do something._

 _But what if I break the moment?_ Lucy thought back.  _I'm so scared to move. What if I do and then he runs away?_

 _But that's the thing, isn't it? There's no in between here. You either do it or you don't. If you do, then he either reciprocates or runs. A concrete one or the other. If you don't? If you don't, then you'll be haunted by the millions of 'what if's' and I promise you not_ one  _of those will involve him leaving you._

Lucy closed her eyes and tilted her head up. Erik's hands drifted to cup her jaw and she could feel his breath fanning over her forehead as he leaned down. Just a little closer and-

"Erik! You illiterate fucknugget, I  _knew_ you were hiding somewhere!" Sorano screeched from the entrance.

Erik ripped himself away from her as if he had been burned, moving to stand several feet away. Lucy only caught the split second of absolute confusion on his face before it was replaced with a sneer. "Who told?"

Sorano planted herself outside Helena's stall firmly, tossing her silver hair back with a humph. "I just  _happened_ to pass by Dr Geer, who  _kindly_ informed me that he saw you sneak in here earlier today. You're unbelievable, you know that? Ugh, come on, the show starts in a half hour and you need to get dressed. You look so ugly I think my retinas just detached themselves."

"Now you know how I feel when I have to look at you every day," Erik snarked back, following her out of the stall. He paused and turned back to Lucy, decidedly more collected than he had been a minute ago. "You're coming to the show, right?"

She nodded. She couldn't trust herself to speak.

"Good. You can faint and then I'll have an excuse to leave early," he grinned. Anyone else would have missed the fact that it was only half as genuine as before, but not Lucy.

"I'll launch you both into the sun if you do," Sorano threatened, grabbing Erik by the wrist and tugging him out of the barn. "Leave early to get a good seat!"

Lucy placed her head between her legs and stayed curled up in a ball until Cana came to collect her fifteen minutes later.

* * *

They managed to grab seats in the fifth row right beside Mira and Mard, who looked more like royalty than the two people who had been hired by the fair to play the king and queen.

"He refused to put on the outfit I had planned," Mira sighed, waving at Mard. The university professor straightened his emerald cufflinks (a perfect match to the shade of Mira's dress, Lucy noted) and scoffed. "I have spent years cultivating my reputation, Mirajane. I refuse to allow it to be tarnished by... _cosplaying_ ," he said the word as if it were a curse.

"Shit, even Erik got roped into dressing up," Cana said, digging through her breasts for a small flask. "You need to call one of those doctors that specialize in assholes, Mard."

" _Dr Geer_."

"Wait, Erik's dressed up?" Mira squealed. "Did you convince him to match you?"

"N-no, uh, Sorano voluntold him to play Orsino in the play, so…" Lucy stuttered. She hoped the shade of red her face was clearly sporting could be explained away by milking Helena.

"Dr Vivas is involved in this?" Mard looked somewhat more interested, although that could have just as easily been him clapping his hands together in glee at the thought of Erik suffering. "I must say, my interest has been piqued. He never struck me as an actor."

"And if you all don't shut up, then we're never gonna see him act," Sorano growled from behind them. "So zip it. I need new blackmail material."

Macbeth either snored or said 'psycho swan bitch' before lolling his head back down to sleep.

The crowd went silent as the spotlight focused center stage and the curtains drew back. Erik stepped forward, dressed a little more suitably for the role, and took a deep breath. He caught Lucy's gaze and then started to speak.

Looking back on it, she had the man seated at her side to thank for her ability to keep up with the purple prose that was Shakespeare. Her knowledge was rusty at best and Erik's monologue didn't flow as smoothly as it would have if somebody with an actual background in theatre had recited it, but it was more than enough for her.

" _Enough, no more._  
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.  
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,  
That, notwithstanding thy capacity  
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,  
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,  
But falls into abatement and low price  
Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy  
That it alone is high fantastical."

Beside her, Mard shifted.

"His tone is mediocre and his control over the language is atrocious, however…" his dark eyes flicked over to Lucy. "I believe that one cannot deny that there is a genuine conviction to what he is saying."

When Lucy was ten, Juvia had dragged her to one of those stupid stalls at the fall fair where you could win a teddy bear if you could guess which cup a small ball was under. The vendor would put the ball under one of four cups and switch them up so quickly that his hands were a blur. Juvia had lost all her three tries, but Lucy won hers on her first go. In retrospect, she knew it was because her brain had subconsciously detected a pattern and had seen where the cup with the ball was, even if there was a disconnect between what she saw and perceived. But on that day, with her hand drifting over the third cup, there had been such an overwhelming flood of  _rightness_  through her body that it left her feeling hollow and whole all at once and she knew if she so much as twitched she would lose. Try as she might, her brain refused to let her hand move, so she selected cup number three and walked away with a stuffed bear as big as her torso.

Looking at Erik over a decade later, Lucy knew she had found her cup number three again.

"Yeah," she said so softly she may as well have not said it all, "You're right."

* * *

"Do you happen to own a weather app at all?" Erik asked as he looped his scarf around her neck. "Or do you look at -15 C and go 'tankini season'?"

"It was  _not_ this cold this morning," Lucy said defensively, though she couldn't deny the sense of deja vu that travelled down her spine. All they needed steady snowfall and the eerie silence of a winter's night and they could have been leaving Asuka's house and she couldn't have spotted the difference.

"That would be because of the sun," Erik said. "Do you need me to explain how that works, too?"

"I'm good. Are you sure you don't wanna catch a cab back? We can split the cost."

"Nah. It's a waste of money for a twenty minute walk," he said, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets. It didn't escape her attention how the arm closest to her was kept at an angle from him, creating a little circle for her to loop her own arm with. She shuffled closer and did so, falling into step with him as they walked away from the fairgrounds.

"You did pretty good today, even Dr Geer was impressed. Well, as impressed as he can get."

"Good. Stupid fuck failed me during the Shakespeare thing we had to do back in uni."

They fell into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the soft crunch of snow beneath their feet and the occasional howling breeze.

It wasn't long before Erik spoke again. "Listen, about earlier today-"

"Let's talk about it later," Lucy interrupted, drawing to a stop. Her gaze remained focused on the way her boots dug into the ice. "...not now."

He nudged her with his elbow until she looked up at him. Though his face screamed 'casual boredom', relief was etched into every inch of his being, right down to the way his exhales turned to fog the second they passed his lips.

"Okay," Erik promised. "Later."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own fairy tail etc etc


	9. Nine Minutes (Clash of the Chemists)

"3, 6, 9, damn she fine! Hoping she can sock it to me one more time!"

"Get low! Get low!"

"From the window!"

"To the wall!"

"Til' the sweat drip down my balls!"

"Til' all these bitches crawl!"

"Til' all skeet skeet motherfuckers!"

"All skeet skeet goddamn!"

"When you said pre-game, I assumed we would be knocking back a glass of good quality wine and then heading out," Wendy murmured, swiping her metallic red lipstick over her lower lip once more for good measure. "Not, you know, chugging fireball."

"Have you  _met_  them?" Lucy said. "It's Cana. And Mira bartends. Wine is pre-game for fancy dinner parties, and fireball is pre-game for clubbing. You're lucky they haven't found the tequila."

Cana perked up at the mention of her second favourite drink on planet Earth and whipped around, pointing her curling wand at the duo seated at the dining table. "We're saving the tequila for body shots at the club! Mira! We got more fireball?"

The silver-haired beauty dug around her purse for a moment before yanking out a fourth of a bottle of fireball, which Cana gleefully snagged and downed in an impressive three seconds. Mira shook her head in mock disapproval, turning back to her heels to continue strapping them to her ankle. Lucy could hardly make heads or tails of the complicated design of the shoe and figured she would be better off in something more plain for the rest of the night, much like her outfit. Where Cana was in an adorable little black number with more straps to hold it together than there was actual cloth, Lucy had opted for a dark red halter neck that stopped short of her knees. Mira had gone for something similar in black, while Wendy had wisely selected a bell-sleeved dress and flats.

"So, what's the general plan, then?" Wendy asked. "I've never gone clubbing before, so…"

"Right!" Cana declared, spinning around and barely managing to catch herself on the door-frame. "Time to introduce you to the F.E.A.R. protocol!"

"Focus sash, endeavor, quick attack, Rattata?"

"No, you Pokemon addicted nerd, F.E.A.R. stands for...Fireball!"

"Engage!" Mira chirped.

"Ass!" Cana crowed.

"Reap!" Lucy finished.

"First, we pre-game with fireball. Then, we go to a club and engage both the bouncer for quick entry, and then some cute guy on the dance floor. Following that, we put our asses to good use and grind for a few hours, and then come back home and reap the rewards. Rewards being all the phone numbers and, depending on the night, the dude you brought to bed," Cana explained. Lucy made a discrete cutting motion over her neck and mouthed, 'you don't have to do that last part' to Wendy before the brunette could take notice.

"Sounds fun! Where are we going?" At that, both Mira and Cana exchanged A Look.

"Club Boost," Mira said, glee falling off her in waves.

"Are you people trying to kill her?" Lucy demanded, setting down her mascara wand. "Club Boost is way too packed on the weekends for her first night out! We need to take her somewhere more subdued. Like, Noctum or something."

"I can handle it," Wendy said confidently. "I can cut open a body with trap blaring in the background, this is nothing."

"They let you listen to trap in the anatomy lab?" Mira whined. "No fair! When I had Berkowitz she only let us listen to classical music."

"A couple people in our class had a mini-revolt, so trap it is."

* * *

Five minutes after they'd entered the club, Lucy had lost her shoes and fifteen dollars.

The shoes were no surprise. It had become a bit of a running joke between her and her friends that Lucy's end of the night costs were alcohol, cover, and however much she had paid for her shoes. She'd tried every type of heel imaginable, from stilettos to pumps to dainty two-inchers, but the second she could feel the bass beneath her the shoes went missing. The fifteen dollars were Cana's, seeing as she had been the one to guess the closest 't-minus shoe loss' ("You couldn't have made it another ten minutes?" Mira had pouted).

"Cheer up, babe," Cana yelled, "At least Wendy had those extra sock-shoe things!"

"They're called no show's," Wendy said, although Lucy had to strain to hear it over the steady thrum of SoCa.

"Kinda like Juvia," Mira said, directing her gaze pointedly at Lucy's phone. "Has she texted back yet?"

"Yeah, she said she'd be a little late. Apparently Totomaru had a small issue they needed to take care of," Lucy replied.

"Little issue? Like, E.D. little issue?" Cana shook her head sorrowfully and sipped at her vodka martini. "A toast to Totomaru and his dysfunctional dick. He's too young for this."

"You're twisted!" Lucy yelled as the music switched over to some basic trap number that had the crowd roaring. "He forgot to upload his student's lab grades is all."

"Erik would consider that grounds for murder," Sorano said directly into Lucy's ear. "Remind me to tell you about how he almost got kicked out for threatening to burn off his chemistry TA's dick."

The blonde took the napkin Mira extended and dabbed at her martini soaked hand. She had only narrowly managed to avoid spilling it all over her lap when Sorano had appeared out of absolutely fucking nowhere and scared the shit out of her.  _There goes ten dollars_ , she mourned. She'd only had one sip of the beautiful nectar, too…

"Her boy-toy's here?" Cana asked eagerly. Lucy's insides churned uncomfortably. Keeping Erik far away from her best friend had been a pain in the ass like no other back during the Renaissance Incident; compounding that with the fact that she'd been steadily avoiding her friendly neighbourhood toxicologist since said incident, and this outing was starting to look more and more like a giant escape room and she was ten minutes away from losing the game.

It wasn't like it was exceptionally hard to do so. He was away at work during the day and she was busy studying for finals in the university's library. Any texts from him were ignored and could thusly be excused as 'I left my phone on do not disturb'. If he dropped by at any point in time during the evening, Lucy merely huddled up in her room and turned up the volume of her music until he went away. She'd yet to even look at the string of lights that connected their balconies - both because she was afraid that if she so much as touched it that whatever physics voodoo had been worked over it would vanish and he would really injure himself trying to climb down, and because there was a small part of her that wanted to keep one line of communication open. Yes, she was dead terrified of speaking to him again, especially after whatever the hell had happened in the barn, but she was more terrified of  _never_ speaking to him again.

But not yet. She couldn't speak to him yet.

"Yeah, he's probably doing a line with Macbeth." At Lucy's scandalized look, Sorano rolled her eyes. "Oh, calm down, he's not actually doing a line. Macbeth, on the other hand...Erik's preferred poison has always been of the alcoholic variety."

"In that case, I'm gonna go and buy my new friend a welcoming round," Cana declared, sliding out of her head and shimmying her way through the crowd. Lucy groaned and pulled out her phone, hesitating over his name.

**To: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 6:22 PM**

_Cana's coming your way, just thought I'd warn you._

**From: Dr Viv-ass**

**Time: 6:22 PM**

_Oh, we're on speaking terms now?_

Fair enough. Had her wincing, but fair enough.

"Lovers spat?" Sorano crooned. Mira honed in on them like an MRI did pieces of metal, her blue eyes flashing. Dread clawed through her chest with every heartbeat, and she brought what was left of her martini to her lips in the hopes that she could use to wide brim of the glass to cover her face. Her first fear should not have been Cana, no, it should have been Mira. All Cana could do was tease her mercilessly and go and scatter fallen chips; Mira, on the other hand, could have worked for the CIA with how good she was at interrogation. Actually, Lucy had no proof that Mira  _didn't_ work for the CIA, so that was one theory that was up for grabs.

"Are you two arguing again?" Mira asked. "Or is this another misunderstanding?"

Wendy touched her shoulder gently. "We won't judge."

With that, Lucy started from the beginning.

She watched their faces light up with glee when she said she thought she had a crush on him, and then the open-mouthed shock when she explained the events of the barn. Sorano had looked indignant, probably because this was the first time she was hearing of it (which meant that Erik had remained similarly silent on the matter), while Mira recoiled, clutching her chest. Wendy was mercifully silent the whole while, not even a gasp escaping her, for which Lucy was grateful. Mira and Sorano already had an inkling of what was going on, but Wendy was an unbiased third party, one who was extraordinarily critical - of all of them, Wendy would give the most clinical answer. The quieter she was, the more she was mulling over the information.

When she was done, Lucy leaned back and held her hands up at her sides. "And that's that."

"You're both stupid," Sorano said. "You know that, right? Beyond stupid. So stupid you both need neurosurgery to fix it."

Right. Just what she needed to hear. It wasn't as if Lucy thought was she was doing was a  _good_ idea, dammit, she knew it was stupid. Nothing was ever solved by ignoring the issue until it went away (because, newsflash, it never did), but it was a hell of a lot easier than putting on her big girl pants and knocking back a fistful of antacids to deal with stress induced acid reflux. It wasn't as if Lucy didn't stay awake for an extra hour every night running over scenario after scenario of how she could approach him and talk about what had almost happened. It wasn't as if she wasn't trying.

"You're both just scared," Wendy corrected. Her short blue hair brushed against her hollow collarbones as she tilted her head ever so slightly to look up at Lucy. "You, obviously, but I think he is, too. He just doesn't process his emotions well."

"So what do I do?"

"I don't know. But you do. You might not know it yet, but you do. And when the time is right...well. You'll see."

"Wendy's getting awfully wise in her old age," Mira's teasing tone broke the heavy atmosphere weighing down on them. She covered her mouth with a dainty palm and wiggled her eyebrows, purring, "Does she have a  _boyfriend_?"

"Yes, and his name happens to be  _Nuclear Medicine in the 21st Century_ ,  _Fourth Edition_."

Mira's hands folded together over the table, and with that, Lucy slid out of her seat and made her way over to the bar. She had sat through enough 'can education count as a long-term relationship' debates to last her a lifetime. Sorano, on the other hand, had yet to be inducted into that particular weekly debacle; what better time than the present?

**From: jujubes**

**Time: 6:42 PM**

_I ran into Cana on the dance floor, Toto's at the bar getting himself a drink_

**To: jujubes**

**Time: 6:43 PM**

_I'll meet you on the floor with him then!_

It wasn't hard to spot Totomaru. It wasn't his impressive 6'2 stature that gave him away, but rather his black and white hair, split down the sagittal plane, that had him sticking out like a sore thumb. That and the fact that anybody within a five foot radius could smell the unmistakable stench of sanitization wafting off him. Lucy felt a sudden twinge in her chest. Erik smelled kind of like that, too. Their brief separation was the longest they'd been apart since they met and for a second, when that scent had hit her nose, she could almost feel  _him_ all over her. She rubbed her arms forcefully, willing away the chill that had hit her, and sidled up to Totomaru.

"Let me guess. Rum and coke."

"You know me so well," Totomaru deadpanned, accepting his glass from the bartender and turning to face Lucy. He had untucked his shirt from his jeans and rolled up the sleeves, but beyond that it was pretty clear that he had rushed to the bar straight from the lab. All that was missing was his tie-dyed lab coat and the safety goggles that made his eyes look three sizes too big for his head. "Let  _me_ guess. Bloody Mary."

"Nope," Lucy popped the 'p' and grabbed his drink, taking in a mouthful and sighing deeply. "I'll just steal it from you."

"I'm getting some severe prom flashbacks here," he said, pulling it back. "Ironically, the only thing missing is you missing your shirt."

"And you still have your pants on, so."

"Well." In the blink of an eye, the drink was gone and he was extending his hand towards her in an exaggerated fashion. "If I remember it right, this song was playing around 3 am that night. Shall we?"

Lucy curtseyed. "Indeed."

* * *

When the bass was heavy enough, Lucy couldn't feel herself.

That was was she loved about the club the most. Those brief moments when the music twanged  _just right_ and it was like she was floating in space. If there was anything she loved more than that, it was the anticipation before it - when the guitars started strumming a little faster and took her heart with them; the fade notching up ever so gently, drawing her breaths out quicker with every little spike; the pitch getting higher and higher and higher and causing her to tense up more and more and more until the bass dropped and she was  _flying_. Sometimes, the only things keeping her grounded were the swaying bodies that boxed her in, but if she closed her eyes then it was like they weren't there anymore. It was her.

Just her.

Totomaru's arms slid around her waist and drew her back flush against the hard planes of his chest. Lucy slid her arms up and locked them around his neck, drawing him close. His thighs brushed against hers, teasing them apart before stretching back and pulling her with him. Rough stubble streaked down her face, inciting a pleasant burn against the heat of her cheeks; she followed the curve of his jaw, just to feel it all over again, but one of his hands trailed up, pausing between her breasts for only a fraction of a second before it caught her chin and tilted it over so he could press his lips to the shell of her ear.

"Is  _that_ the doctor you're having issues with?" Totomaru murmured, cutting through the blissful haze Lucy had worked herself into. "Because he looks ready to come over here and make me taste leather for a few weeks."

Lucy fluttered her eyelashes open just enough that, to an outsider, it would have looked like they were still closed. She could make out Erik's tense body next to the bar, half hidden by the slouched figure of Macbeth. She arched her back, driving her ass backwards and thrusting her chest out, the very picture of sensuality. The new angle gave her an even better view of Erik snapping his back up straighter than she thought possible.

She didn't think it was the thrum of the bass sending waves of  _something_ riding through her stomach this time.

"Yeah," she replied. "He  _does_ look pretty antsy, hm?"

"You want him to come over?" He dropped his mouth to her neck, hovering so close he could have been kissing her and the crowd -  _Erik_ \- would have been none the wiser.

"Won't Juvia be a little upset over her boyfriend getting all touchy-feely with his ex?"

" _Juvia_." He smirked against her skin. "Has given me full permission to do everything short of bathroom sex to get you two in close proximity.  _Apparently_ , while the two of you desperately do want to talk to one another, you're both, and I quote, 'too fucking bitch baby' to initiate it all. You especially."

"So you're going to, what, give us a little push in the right direction?"

"Jealousy is a plot point as old as time. Let me work my magic."

So Lucy did.

It was easy getting back into the groove of things with Totomaru. Their relationship had been short, but fun while it lasted and she had no hard feelings over their breakup. Her body certainly hadn't taken long to remember how to sway and grind back against him. His hands swept familiar patterns against her torso, tracing memories long forgotten into the curve of her hips and the swell of her ass. He brushed his lips over the column of her neck and her jaw, pressing down every so often in areas she knew they'd been before -  _skipping math class to make out behind the stairs, the lab bench after hours, prom under the stars when his fingers had sent her up to join them._

She was no innocent party in it all. She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled at the roots harshly, tighter still when she heard his breathless moan into her skin. Her ass pushed back into his groin, far too reminiscent of times spent in the back of his cramped car, and when she dropped down and slowly rose up, Totomaru's hands running the length of her reverently, Lucy knew she had caught  _him._

"Oh, he's  _mad_ ," Totomaru whispered into her ear once more. Lucy smiled lazily, flicking her tongue out to run over her  _redredred_  lips. "Not mad enough to come here and talk."

"He will be in a minute," he promised, trailing his hand lower and lower and  _lower_ -

Lucy's head slammed back into his shoulder, gasping as his freezing cold fingers slid up her skirt and curled around the lace of her frilly thong. Her legs squeezed together tightly against the sudden burst of heat within her.  _Good God, it had been so long._

"Really, Luce? Thongs? You haven't changed a damn bit." He laughed. "The good doctor's on his way over."

And with that, Totomaru spun her around and kissed her.

Lucy had only a second to process the roughness of his stubble against her mouth and the taste of rum on his breath before she was pulled back into Erik's chest with enough force to push the air out of her lungs.

"Dr Vivas, yeah?" Totomaru asked cheerfully, as if he hadn't just had his tongue down her throat a moment ago. "Nice to meet you. Name's Totomaru."

Erik's face was impossibly marble in its stillness. His eye barely moved as he took in the chemist - the  _challenge_ \- and the only indication he gave that he'd even heard what the other man had said was a sharp exhale. His grip tightened on Lucy's shoulders; she shuddered. It wasn't  _painful_ , God no, but the difference between him and Totomaru was dizzying in its intensity. Totomaru was a slow burn, far too gentle to have her feeling anything more than a burst of fluttering in her abdomen. Erik was a pulse of something warm and hazy, a drop of it in her chest that rippled out until the furthest edges of her body could feel it, even if only for a flash in time.

"Juvia looks like she's about to start body shots." Totomaru winked and tapped her nose. "Gotta go save my girl before she starts breaking bar-tops again."

"His  _girl_?" Erik hissed once he left. "He's got a girlfriend and he's-?"

"Totomaru's my ex from high school," Lucy replied defensively, turning around so she could meet his livid gaze. "This was just a song from prom, we thought we'd have a dance for old times sake."

"He  _kissed_  you."

Lucy shrugged delicately. "Unplanned, but Juvia's okay with it." Well, she was okay with it for a  _reason_ , not that he had to know.

"Right. Right." Erik dropped his hands (Lucy almost groaned) and rubbed his face. When they fell at his side, his face was back to that impassive half-sneer that he'd carried back in the beginning. "Jesus Christ, Heartfilia."

 _That_ had her reeling back. She swallowed thickly, doing her best to stay steady on her feet. Maybe it was the alcohol; maybe it was the heat of the dancefloor; hell, maybe it was sudden onset food poisoning, but Lucy felt  _queasy._

"So we're on speaking terms now?" she echoed.

"Don't," he snapped. " _I'm_ not the one who went fucking AWOL for a week after the whole thing in the barn."

"Oh?" Okay,  _now_ she was almost mad enough that she forgot her stomach was roiling. "What  _thing_ in the barn?"

"You know  _damn_ well what I'm talking about."

"Then  _say it_."

"No."

"Fine," Lucy snarled. "You almost  _kissed me_ in the barn. Happy?"

"Only took you a week to build the guts needed to say it, huh?" Erik said. His hands fell to where Totomaru's had been, pulling her flush to his hips. He braced his forehead against hers as he spoke. "Yeah, I almost  _kissed you_. You were the one who wanted to wait to talk about it."

"I was a little freaked out. Just a  _little_. God forbid I need some time to process that youmightbeinterestedinme," she said the last part so quickly that even she needed to repeat that to herself twice before she got it.

"Wait,  _what_?" He drew back, mildly surprised. " _You_ were freaked out over  _that_? And your natural response was...what, making out with the cow?"

She scowled. "Don't be a jackass. And...well, that was more to get you mad enough to come talk to me."

"You're fucking stupid, I hope you know this."

"Funny, your lawyer told me the same thing," Lucy said dryly. She hadn't noticed that her arms had found their way around his shoulders; his own wound around her waist. They were so close she could feel his chest rise and fall, see the steady thrum of his pulse in his neck.

It was hard to describe how her heart felt so full and empty all at once. She was a rope, held up by nothing but sheer tension alone, and she knew that the  _second_ he pressed those full lips of his against hers, the wire would snap and it would be all over. She was equal parts hungry for him and hesitant. If she had it her way, she'd drag him to the corner of the club, pin him up against a wall, and be ruined for all other men when he finally,  _finally_ took her. But.

But.

Not now.

Now was not the time. Now was not the place.

It seemed Erik had read her mind, because he sighed softly and pressed their foreheads together once more, brushing the side of his nose against hers. "Yeah. I know."

"I want to know what  _we_ are first," she whispered, trailing her hands up to cup his neck. "I like you. A lot. But I think we need a little more time to adjust to that."

"Fine," he replied. "I don't know what we are. I like you. You like me. But if it takes us a week to get our shit together to talk about almost kissing, we're not ready yet. When you are, I'll be here. Even if it takes a few years."

"I should  _hope_ not. A few weeks at the most."

"I'm gonna need  _a few weeks_  to adjust to the fact that you dated a  _chemist_." Erik's tone soured. "Am I a rebound? God, tell me we're nothing alike. I hate him already."

"You're a chemist, too," she reminded him. "And no, you're nothing alike, except you both think that the soft sciences should be purged. And you both enjoy doing experiments at home. Also, your grading schemes are-" Erik groaned loudly and dropped his head in the crook of her neck. "Shut up, I need a minute to digest this."

Lucy laughed, twining her fingers through his hair. She closed her eyes and curled her toes, stretching her leg muscles where she stood. Even if they hadn't come to a solid definition of what they were, they were talking again and that meant that one day they would. She'd been worked up over nothing, fretting over whether or not he would acknowledge what had happened - and, beyond that, whether or not they could still be  _friends_ after it. She valued his presence in her life too much to let something as stupid as a crush get in the way of it, but the knowledge that what had transpired wasn't just some fluke of the moment thing - that it was  _real_ \- broke the dam within; hell, she was surprised she was still standing after it all. Every muscle in her body was loose and her head was stuffed full of cotton. Still, she had enough sense left in her to curse herself for being so damn  _stupid_  and compounding the problem herself - if only she'd opened the door when he came knocking the first time around, it wouldn't have come to this.

 _All things happen for a reason,_ Inner Cana murmured,  _and if this was how you two were supposed to discuss it, then so be it. The universe has a way of making these things work._

_You know what? You're right._

"He spent a lot of time kissing your neck," Erik said suddenly, his lips sliding into the hollow of her collarbone. "Any particular reason why?"

"We dated during high school for a bit. Horny teens like leaving hickies." Lucy grinned devilishly. "You should've seen me after prom. Hey!"

"Whoops," he deadpanned, staring at the spot he'd nipped her with a self-satisfied look. "My bad."

"Jackass."

The pressure against the corner of her lips was so light that it was only Erik pulling back that let her know that, no, she'd  _not_ just imagined him giving her what amounted to a half-kiss.

"The one spot he  _didn't_ get you," Erik said.

"He still got me on my lips."

The look he shot her was nothing short of  _illegal._ "I will in due time."

"Oi! Quit fucking on the dance floor and get over here, we need to do the body shots part of F.E.A.R!" Cana hollered from across the club. If there was one thing Cana never let anybody forget, it was that she had single-handedly led the cheerleading team to nationals four years running in high school. Her lung capacity could probably give Juvia a run for her money, and  _she_ was a nationally ranked swimming champion.

"F.E.A.R?"

"Long story." Lucy grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the bar, where all their friends were waiting. "Sorry! We were talking."

"All well?" Wendy asked kindly. Her sharp eyes flicked between their joined hands and the light air about the two of them, before finally settling on pinning Lucy with a knowing look.

"Yeah." Lucy squeezed his hand. "It is."

"It will be," Erik said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail or any songs in this fic etc etc


	10. Ten Lords Too Many

Lucy wasn't having a panic attack.

"You're having a panic attack," Erik said evenly.

"No, I'm  _not_ ," Lucy managed to get out between gasps. If there was ever a time that she needed a 'needs more jpeg' bot in real life, it was now. Her head was so light and fuzzy that Erik looked like he'd been screenshot fifteen times and sent on rounds throughout facebook before being dropped in front of her sofa; if she looked at his hands, his face seemed to be in an entirely different dimension.

"According to Google, you are," he replied. His free hand scratched her head lightly as he scrolled through his phone.

"You have a doctorate in Googling? Funny, I thought it was toxicology."

"My doctorate taught me how to Google shit properly. Anyway, according to this website you need to meet four of the following symptoms to be having a panic attack: palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate-"

"80 beats per minute is fine."

"Your resting heart rate is 60. Trembling or choking."

"It's  _freezing_ outside! Do you see the blizzard? Do you?"

"Feeling dizzy, unsteady, light-headed, or faint."

"I haven't eaten since I woke up because you ate my fucking ramen."

"Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering."

"You know just as well as I do that the junkie across the hall set his kitchen on fire and the smoke is fucking my lungs."

"Right," he deadpanned, throwing his phone onto the other end of the sofa and propping his arm up to cushion his cheek. "According to the website it should be fine in a couple minutes."

"You're the shittiest half-boyfriend ever," Lucy groaned, burying her head into a pillow. Her day had started off just fine: she'd woken up to Erik descending The Rope into her balcony to raid her fridge, spent ten minutes yelling at him for eating the last of her ramen ("I'm looking out for your sodium levels."), and then went online to see if she could find a breakfast recipe involving what meager ingredients she had left in her pantry. It was then that she saw the cursed orange glow on her email icon.

Everything after that? A blur of her dropping onto the sofa and, to quote Erik, "sounding like you'd just been CPR'd to life in a shitty hospital drama", followed up by the aforementioned sprinting across the room to make sure she hadn't gone and died on him.

 _Fucking sweetheart,_ Inner Cana cooed.

_For doing the bare minimum? Have some respect._

"If you want to unlock 'caring Erik' you have to upgrade to the 'full-boyfriend' package," he said. Despite his aloof tone, his brow was furrowed and he kept lowering his hand to her neck to check her pulse. She would scoff if breathing wasn't already such a hassle. He could pretend to be as annoyed as he wanted, he wasn't fooling her.

"Too broke for that right now, call me back in a couple months," Lucy said. "How long does the trial last?"

"Eh, until your panic attack-"

" _Brief moment of shock, thank you_."

" _Panic attack_ ends. I'm assuming whatever it is has to do with an email you read. What, you fail a course?"

"Worse," she said grimly, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Pulled into tight ball, Lucy found it easier to focus on slowing her breaths from 'post-400 meter sprint' to 'walked up a flight of stairs'. "My father emailed me."

"That sucks," Erik said tonelessly. It wasn't that he didn't care (well, that was a lie, he probably  _didn't_ ) but Lucy had never actually sat him down and explained her sordid history, starting with her being born at the ass-crack of dawn, and ending with her stuffing all her worldly possessions into a backpack (and her bra), stealing a motorcycle, and driving three towns over to crash at Natsu's for the night. Now that her breathing was somewhat stable, she could likely condense it down to three sentences or less.

"To make an  _extremely_ long story short, my dad's a jackass and because of his jackassery, I ran away from home a while back. We haven't spoken much since, so this email was a bit of a shock. Why did I run away? Well, it was a decision that was a long time coming, but really the straw that broke the camel's back was him getting me engaged to Sawarr Junelle." Four sentences. Close enough.

"He  _what_." Erik looked as though he had just dunked his bare hands into a dirty sink and touched a bit of food stuck to the bottom. Lucy watched, amused, as he schooled his features into a weak approximation of his regular impassivity. He couldn't quite keep his eye blank enough, nor could he hide the tightness of his jaw, but she gave him a gold star for effort. "Are you two still…?"

" _God_ no. I mean. I never signed the contract, so…" She nibbled her lip thoughtfully. "I hope not?"

She jerked back when he slammed his head into the cushions and ran his hands through his hair. He mumbled something that sounded a lot like 'give me ischemia' before lifting his head high enough to make eye contact with her. "Why'd he email?"

"He's throwing a Christmas Ball and, uh, given the timing of our last...meeting…" she trailed off sheepishly.

He blinked. "You left on Christmas Eve?"

"Yup."

"Do you take all your life inspiration from MTV dramas?"

The look Lucy threw him could have curdled blood. Ok, so it  _was_ a little over the top, and maybe she  _had_ plotted it while listening to old Kelly Clarkson tunes (maybe she'd even been specifically listening to  _Breakaway_ ), and maybe she'd penned the idea down a thousand times since her mother had died, but that  _did not_ mean she watched MTV dramas. She picked up a pillow and tucked it under her chin, huffing. Erik rolled his eye and sighed deeply. "So. You going?"

She opened her mouth to spit out a very firm 'no', and stopped. The unease settling in her gut crept up to her heart and lungs, gripping on tight to her blood cells and flooding her body with trepidation. She wanted to say no; she'd made her peace with running away before her motorcycle's tire treads had cooled enough to let the falling snow cover them up. The only happy memories from her time in that mansion were trapped in her head, engrams upon engrams clinging to one another like a chain-link fence. She had no need to return, no need to walk the halls that had more ghosts in them than she cared to think about.

And yet.

And yet, there was a part of her, stubborn, childish, and naïvely hopeful, that longed to see her father once more. The foundations of the chain-link fence in her head were built upon his rare smiles; his deep voice reading to her when her mother was unwell; Sunday's spent in his study, watching him pour over documents she couldn't understand, with him filling in the blanks for her. Half of these memories were so faded that all she had access to were sounds and smells. They would never be as close as they were when she was four, but if there was a chance she could see him smile at her for  _real_ , just this once…

"We're going, I take it?" Erik drawled. " _Great_ , I can finally put that stupid graduation suit to use again."

She sat up so quickly that the room rotated upside down for a hot second. " _What_?"

"I  _would_ say that I'm there to support you all the way, however that's unlocked after you download a version patch for the 'full-boyfriend' software." Erik ducked her light-hearted swat, catching her wrist. "So what I  _can_ say now is that I'm bored, avoiding a lab report, and I figure your shitty pops will have some good quality food set up, so I can probably knock out eating escargot from my bucket list."

"They're pretty gross," Lucy said. The finer details of that night escaped her mind, but she vividly remembered trotting over to the balcony and throwing up through the bars. The upchuck had fallen all over some poor sod below.

"I like gross things," Erik said cheerfully - which, from Erik, sounded more like sadistic glee - as he patted her knee. "Case in point."

"I'm demoting you to booty call."

* * *

Stepping onto Konzern grounds, Lucy felt as though she had entered a pillar of amber. Everything was just as she remembered, right down to the top left mismatched screw that fixed a plaque beneath a statue of a lion that sneered down at them. The path leading up to the imposing mansion had been swept clean and salted, and Lucy found herself hopping on familiar stones as she slowly made her way over. Her eyes fell upon the fountain she'd played in growing up. She wondered if the third brick was still loose enough to wiggle out, or if her father had noticed the imperfection and corrected it like he always did when something wasn't to his liking.

Her musings were cut short by Erik's hissed, "Wanna hurry it up? I'm losing feeling in my gut tissue."

"Is my little toxsicle feeling chilly?" she cooed, shooting him a bright smile over her shoulder. Where she had elected to wear a coat, hat, and gloves, Erik looked ready to hike up Mount Everest. All she could see was his one eye glaring at her between the small strip that his hat and scarf allowed him. "Kill you."

"If tonight is as bad as I think it's gonna be…" she muttered. The entire four hour train ride over had been spent running over every possible way the evening could end, starting with Junelle declaring his intentions to marry her right there and then (culminating with both herself and Erik busting their way out like it was a Naruto filler episode), and ending with her mother rising from the grave to...do whatever zombies did. Erik had spent those four hours passed out, courtesy of the lorazepam he'd knocked back at the platform. Sorano, who'd come to the station bearing the pills, had said only one thing: 'motion sickness'.

The door swung open before her fingers even touched the doorbell, and Lucy nearly fell over as a stout body barrelled into her with a cry of, "Miss Lucy!"

"Mrs Spetto!" Lucy gasped, returning the hug tightly. Of all the people she regretted never saying goodbye to, her childhood nanny ranked high up. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in deeply. The scent that clung to Mrs Spetto could only be described as uniquely  _home_.

Erik shuffled past them with a quiet 'thank fucking god', and Lucy watched out of the corner of her eye as he leaned against one of the ornate pillars that stood to the side of the doors, relishing the heat from within. One of the butlers stared at him, scandalized, and opened his mouth to protest just as Mrs Spetto pulled back and ushered Lucy in. "Miss Lucy, it's been far too long! I've missed you so much!"

"I missed you, too! I'm sorry I-"

"Lucy."

She felt like the only thing in current time in a world that had come to a stop. Everything faded to white noise as her eyes snapped up to the top of the stairs.

His beard was a little thicker and his hair was greying at the temples, but his blue eyes were as cold and unfeeling as she remembered them to be. Those were the same eyes that had assured her that her scraped up knees would be okay, and they were the same eyes that had unflinchingly told her there was no way out of marrying Junelle.

Her lips remained tightly fused as she struggled to say something. Hello? Hi? Dad? Fuck you? What  _did_ one say after abandoning her only parent in the dead of the night like a coward? If she'd said something to his face before leaving perhaps she would be staring at him with an equal coolness to her stance, at ease knowing that her conscience was clear. Instead, Lucy was eighteen once more and the ground had split open under her feet, a canyon that grew deeper and deeper with every step he descended. Her breathing hitched, pulse skyrocketed, and -

 _Panic attack_ , Inner Cana said grimly.

 _Just because Erik said it_ once  _doesn't make it true._

_No, I mean you're having one right now. He's hissing it in your ear._

Lucy bit the inside of her cheek until she could taste copper on her tongue, forcing herself back to reality. She could freak out in the shower later, when her father wasn't staring at her with faint disappointment clear on his features.

"Father," she said. "Hi."

"You forgot to RSVP," Jude replied. "Nevertheless. Jared." The butler from before snapped to attention. "Make arrangements for two extra attendees." Jared bowed so deeply that the tips of his hair brushed the ground, and he scurried off to the left wing.

"I see you brought a guest. Allow me to introduce myself, if Lucy has not mentioned me before. I am Jude Heartfilia, President of Heartfilia Incorporated," Jude said, tilting his head in greeting. If the slight sneer wasn't seen, then the judgement wafting over was certainly felt. Lucy knew exactly what he was pulling away from Erik, because Jude had trained her to pick out those things, too. Scar over the eye, the casual stance, non-branded clothing, zero deference on his face...at thirteen, Lucy would have easily labeled him a good-for-nothing delinquent and ignored him without a second glance.

"Dr Erik Vivas, head of the toxic substances subdivision at the Center for Disease Control," Erik drawled. "Nice to meet you, Jude."

Mrs Spetto squawked, Jude raised a thin eyebrow, and Lucy wished she'd brought Macbeth with her instead. The worst  _he_ could do was sleep through the whole thing. Erik? No, Erik was here to uproot power structures and leave scandal in his wake. Even  _Junelle_ , when he was gearing up to present her with an engagement ring, called him 'President Heartfilia'.

"Mrs Spetto." Jude turned his head to her. "Show our guests-" Lucy winced. "-their accommodations. And Lucy. My office after you've settled in."

"Right this way." Mrs Spetto shooed them up the stairs.

It was only as they brushed past Jude and Erik's grip tightened that Lucy realized he'd had his arm around her waist the whole time.

* * *

"Very IKEA-inspired decor."

"Thanks. I'll be sure to pass that along to my ten-year-old self."

"You were this boring at ten? You sure you're not actually thirty-something? Cougar."

Lucy shot him a dry look as she rifled through her bags for her makeup. "Let me guess, your room at ten was a lot more...posters for wallpaper."

Erik flopped back on her bed and hummed. "Let's see, at ten I was being fostered at the Conbolt's, so...blue walls and matching sheets."

"Nice to see we were both extremely boring at that age." Lucy pulled out a tube of lipstick and made her way into the bathroom to smear on an extra coat. Once she did that and smacked her lips, she pulled out a comb and went through the motions of brushing out her hat-hair. French braid or no French braid, that was the question…

"What do you think he wants to talk about?" Erik called.

Lucy paused with her brush halfway through her hair. "I don't know. Maybe ask why I left. Maybe tell me to sign the contract to marry me off to Junelle. Hell, maybe he wants to have a teary reunion away from prying eyes."

"I want to be there for all three, albeit for different reasons." She jumped, narrowly avoiding smacking him with the brush. "Stop being such a ninja creep. And you're not coming."

He took a step in and boxed her in against the counter. There were a lot of things she could do in this situation. Hop up on the counter, wrap her legs around his waist and bang him like they did in the shitty romance thrillers that aired at 2 am; drop to her knees and  _also_ do something out of a romance thriller; pull him down for a kiss that would blow his mind and leave a lipstick stain that would last for days; or escape the box and continue to do her hair.

She settled for poking him in the chest with her brush. "Leave room for the holy spirit."

"Nah," he replied, leaning in closer. "Why can't I come?"

"What happened to the half-boyfriend package being bare minimum?"

"You've received a temporary upgrade to premium, enjoy it while it lasts."

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the mirror, patting her hair down. She watched his reflection in the mirror, and felt the heat of his breath a split second before she registered his lips at the shell of her ear. "Fine, I'll stay back. But remember, I can hear you."

* * *

Lucy's legs were starting to go numb. Still, she kept them firmly planted to the ground. It wouldn't do to be crossing and uncrossing her legs under her father's scrutiny; 'the mark of a nervous, weak soul' he'd always told her. The corset she wore straightened what little of her back stubbornly continued to slouch, and the high collar kept her head high even when she tried to duck down and pick out patterns from the carpeted floor. Mrs Spetto had clearly selected this outfit for more than style.

Across from her, Jude continued to stare.

Lucy exhaled slowly and tried to force herself to break the silence, but froze up once more. Three fucking times. She'd tried this three fucking times, and every time she so much as managed to get a sentence strung together in her head, her throat felt like it had swollen up and she couldn't breathe. No amount of self-talk or breathing exercises was helping. Coming here was a goddamn mistake. Little purple half-moons blossomed on her skin from where she was gripping the back of her hand too tightly in an attempt to ground herself.

 _That'll look terrible at the party,_ she thought absently, rubbing them.

"You seem to be doing well in classes," Jude said.

 _Buddy, what the fuck?_ Inner Cana said.

"Thank you," Lucy responded, though she couldn't help the note of confusion in her words. She'd run away some three years ago and he wanted to talk about her  _grades_? No 'how dare you' or 'how are you fending for yourself'?

"I assume you are living with…" The blood in her face drained before soaring up full force. Lucy waved her hands so fiercely she felt something in her wrist crack.

"No!"

_Yes!_

"No, he lives a floor above mine. We're not...like that."

_Yet._

_You shut your whore mouth._

"Ah." Jude seemed to perk up a little. If he'd been anyone else, Lucy would say he seemed...happy about that. "I take it you are currently single, then?"

"...yes?" Kill Bill sirens were blaring in the back of her head, and Inner Cana was doing her 'fuck this shit I'm out' dance, however morbid curiousity bound her to the seat, even though she  _knew_  what was coming next.

"Then your engagement to Sawarr Junelle can proceed-"

"Are you  _serious_?" Lucy exploded, leaping up. Blind with fury, she cleared the gap between her and the desk in a quick step and slammed her hands down, taking a bit of vindictive pleasure in the way his jaw twitched. "I've come back here after three fucking years - after  _running away_ \- and you just...jump straight into this shit? You know  _damn well_ why I ran away, too! What makes you think I'd just fucking prance back here with open arms now? You're unbelievable!"

Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, drowning out all other senses. She was burning and freezing all at once, skin itching with the desire to do  _something_ other than stand there with righteous fury in her eyes. She wanted to break the stupid desk he called a home and shatter the computer he treasured more than her; throw away the pens he'd tried to sign her life away with and set fire to the papers he thought were worth more than her life. If she had it her way, this entire room could be torn to shreds and she'd be happy for it. There wasn't a single good memory hidden in the walls. Her own mother - god, the woman he'd married and who'd bore his child - avoided this godforsaken room because she knew the only thing that mattered in there was your net value, and even though  _she_ had been the one to give him the money to start up at the end of the day his first and only love were his stupid fucking contracts.

"I'm your  _daughter_ ," her voice broke, much to her mortification. She was supposed to be  _strong and confident_ , goddammit, not doing everything he'd ever taught her not to do when making a deal. She'd had the mantra of 'show no emotions' beaten into every nerve of her body since the day her mother had passed away, and here she was, biting her lips until they bled to keep the tears at bay. "I'm not a commodity to be bought and sold. Why can't you…"

 _I ain't Erik. I ain't your stable person and I'm not gonna save you with snark. But I_ am  _you, whether you wanna admit it or not. Stop thinking, start talking,_ Inner Cana ordered.  _You know him. Every minute you waste breathing is a point off your credibility._

 _I can't. You_ know  _he won't listen. Or care._

_True, but he made a big mistake, didn't he? He taught you all his tricks._

Lucy wiped her eyes and steeled herself. "I am  _not_ your bargaining chip. If your incompetence is such that you are unable to absorb the Junelle's estates without signing me over to them, then state that instead of pretending that a merging of families is in our best interests. You know as well as I do that Sawarr would be an extremely poor heir to the Heartfilia fortune, seeing as he has squandered his inheritance away on drink and games. Your interest lies in the land. If you are willing to give me away for something as cheap as that, then your business ventures have succeeded out of divine intervention rather than talent.

"Erik and I will be attending the ball. It's too late to travel back. Tomorrow? We're gone and you'll  _never_ hear from me again."

_Make him proud._

Lucy paused and then tipped the pen-holder over.

_For you._

_You make_ me  _proud, you stupid bitch,_ Inner Cana sniffed.

* * *

"Okay," Erik said calmly. "That was the  _ninth_ lord of whatever to look down your dress. One more and I'm about to give you an impromptu lesson on making poisons out of cleaning products."

Lucy rolled her eyes and took another sip of her champagne. If there was one thing she missed from her high-society days, it was the booze. Broke university students considered fireball and four-dollar-wine a luxury, and though she had grown to appreciate the tang of the cheap shit, she'd grown up on thousand dollar chardonnay and hundred-year-old whiskey. It was hard to adjust. She eyed an unopened bottle longingly. Maybe if she hid it under her dress…

"Don't worry, I nicked a couple bottles already," Erik informed her as he helped himself to another slice of salmon on a cracker. "God this shit is good. How do you live off ramen knowing what heaven tastes like?"

"With great patience," she murmured, losing herself in the crowd once more. There were many faces she recognized, and many she didn't, though the former outnumbered the latter. She could spot some girls she'd played with as a child with babies bouncing on their hips, mingling in distinct circles that Lucy quietly scoffed at; those were the same circles they'd held at the age of four. How much had changed, and yet how little. Try as they might to shed their former selves and step into the shoes of their parents, Lucy knew better. She knew that Martina Wright avoided Catherine Zales because at the age of six, Catherine had worn the exact same dress to their ballet recital, not because Catherine at 21 was in the middle of a heated bid with her for the same mall. She knew that Martina's husband, Theodore, was only talking to Richard De Leon because Theodore's father had been telling him since he was ten that Richard was his in at the governor's office.

Looking around, she'd never been so thankful for running away.

"Princess!"

Lucy stared at her glass. If she broke it on the table and then slammed her face into it, she'd probably terrify Sawarr enough that he would run away and she would be free to go home and sleep in her curry-stained pj's.

_You know that's a damn lie. He'd find that hot._

_Kill me. Please._

Much like the mansion, Sawarr hadn't changed a bit in the three years since she'd booked it. He was still a full head shorter than she was, still wore rounded glasses, and still looked and dressed like the jawbreakers she'd get Mrs Spetto to sneak her on occasion. He extended his hands towards her, to which Lucy's fight or flight response went 'option number three, freeze!' She could smell, more than see, the sweat that clung to him despite the fact that he'd drenched himself in that horrid perfume they banned in schools for inducing asthma attacks.

_Ooh, asthma attack, that's a new idea...quick, start gasping!_

_I hate you because I might actually do this._

Lucky for Lucy, before she could put on her best impression of a patient in a hospital drama going into anaphylactic shock ( _all for the drama,_ Inner Cana purred), Erik stepped in.

Lucy snorted.

She'd definitely taken into account Sawarr and Erik running into one another in her 'what could possibly go wrong' fantasies on the train, but the mental images did zero justice to the actual scene. It was as if somebody had taken an Oompa Loompa and had him pose next to a firefighter in one of those 'for charity' calendars they made every year at the local fire station. Erik loomed over Sawarr. He'd discarded his suit jacket an hour ago and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, so his muscles pressed against the fabric in a way that hinted at their presence and tantalizingly went, 'wait! There's more'. She pinched herself firmly.

_Stop drooling over him!_

_Like I said before, I'm_ you _, so don't go pointing fingers._

"Princess?" Erik repeated slowly, the same way one would when trying to say 'you're a fucking idiot' without actually saying 'you're a fucking idiot'. Lucy felt a small part of herself die on the inside. Today was The Day. The Day he'd realize why she absolutely fucking despised being called princess. Sure, she could've told him before but it seemed so...weirdly anticlimactic to tell him over a bowl of popcorn. 'Hey Erik, you know why I hate being called princess? Cause my gremlin looking not-really fiance used to call me that, so basically, Pavlov himself held my hand and conditioned me to break out into hives whenever I hear it. Pass the coke.'

...So Erik was  _probably_ right when he called her a drama queen. This would be a little more interesting to watch.

"Of course!" Sawarr exclaimed. He grabbed her hands (Erik looked both immensely amused and grossed out on her behalf) and shot her an ooey-gooey, lovestruck smile. Lucy managed to keep herself from looking ready to retch. "Why shouldn't I call my future wife a princess? Look, she's even wearing the same dress she wore when the date was announced!"

Lucy looked down. Red and white and sparkly all over. She  _knew_ she'd seen it somewhere before…

"Really? I thought you picked that out 'cause it looked like our tree topper," Erik told her.

" _That's_ what it looked like!" Lucy drew her hands back and clapped them together. "I  _knew_ I'd seen this somewhere!"

_...our tree topper?_

Cue the record scratch.

_Oh no, he's not playing this game. There's no way-_

_He's playing this game,_ Inner Cana cackled,  _and he's killing it._

"You two are roommates?" Sawarr pressed on a little too forcefully. Lucy winced ever so slightly. Rule two after 'don't show emotions' was 'never look desperate'. Her honey eyes caught her father's cold blue ones from across the room. Daringly, she cocked an eyebrow as if to say ' _this_ is your future son-in-law?'

Jude turned away with a frown.

_Victory._

"Nope. She's my half-girlfriend," Erik announced cheerfully. "But she designated me booty call earlier, so I guess that's our official status."

A group of girls who'd been tittering nearby like vultures looking for meat let out a unified gasp at that. Lucy could feel her reputation sinking faster than steel in water, but she didn't care. In the very room where she'd shed sweat and tears over building the perfect reputation, to declare that she didn't care, even if to herself, was the most intensely freeing act of them all. It was as if a cloak of lead had been thrown off, and she stood proudly before prying eyes, daring any of them to come forth and say otherwise. She was Lucy goddamned Heartfilia, and she didn't give a  _fuck_ about her reputation.

_You totally hummed that to the song, didn't you._

_Shut up._

"H-how? She's - we agreed to - Lucy?" Sawarr looked at her tearfully. "It's not...you're my fiancee!"

"Yeah, about that...I never signed a contract. You've been single this whole time." Lucy shrugged. She'd yelled at her father, declared she was shacking up before marriage with what amounted to a total stranger, and was on her fourth drink of the night. What was a little heartbreak to perfect the shitfest? They'd be talking about this for  _months._

"How dare you," Junelle Sr, a man who had clearly contributed most to his son's genetic lottery, snarled. "You knew  _damn well_  you were his intended. Running off to philander with this...delinquent-"

"Doctor," Erik interrupted. "It's the missing eye, isn't it? Lab safety, kids, take it seriously."

"Like a little whore?"

"I wouldn't say that if I were you," Erik said, a touch too excited. "She's got a mean left hook. Seriously, I've seen her get the drop on two linebackers before."

Natsu and Gray had been blackout drunk, so all she'd really done was shove them onto the bed and roll them on their sides. They didn't have to know that, though. Lucy flexed her biceps, nodding the whole while.

"There's someone out there for you," Lucy told Sawarr earnestly. "She's just not me. Try Tinder? Er, right, you." She pointed to Junelle Sr. "I've never wanted to marry your son. You're also a bag of dicks in human form, so there's that. Erik and I are gonna spend the rest of the night in our corner, so if you could leave us alone that'd be nice."

"You're not gonna hit him?"

Lucy paused, shrugged, and went for the nose.

"Worldstar!" Erik yelled from behind his phone.

* * *

"You should've kept your thumb out."

"I'll remember that for next time. Hey, my other hand is fine, so why don't we try it out on you?" Lucy asked sourly, pressing a pack of ice to her knuckles.

"Nah, we've had enough fun for the night, don't you think?" Erik asked. He pulled the kettle off the stove and poured out two mugs of hot water. Taking his sweet time with measuring out the ingredients let Lucy appreciate the way his shirt clung to his back muscles.

_As always, you know my suggestion._

_And you know mine._

"I've literally made it so I can never return, but I've never felt so free in my life," Lucy said. She pulled the ice pack off and ran her fingers over her knuckles. They were so numb she could hardly register the light pressure she applied to them, but they weren't puffy anymore.

"Good." He slid one mug over and raised his own in a mock toast. "To burning old bridges to light the path up."

"Thanks," she said softly.

"For the coffee? I mean, if-"

"You know what for. Thank you. Really." She could never find the words to express how grateful she was that he'd dragged her back here for closure. She hadn't even known how deeply she'd internalized her emotions over running away until stuck in an office with her father. After all that had been said and done, Lucy doubted they'd ever meet up again. His approval of her and Sawarr 'officially' breaking it off was her blessing to leave once and for all, and for that she was grateful.

"Sure," Erik drawled, but Lucy didn't miss the gentle upturn of his lip for a split second before it morphed into his customary smirk. "So, has this trial run been sufficient enough for a full software upgrade?"

"You didn't punch Junelle Sr for me, so I'll stick to the trial run for now." She kissed his cheek and left the kitchen.

"Oh, come on! I was being  _supportive_  and letting you take charge! I'll go knock his teeth out right now if you want! Hey! Blondie!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	11. Eleven Minute Solo's

"How much do you know about music?"

Lucy tapped her teeth with her fork rhythmically before answering. "If the little hat is right-side up then it's a whole rest, and if it's upside down then it's a half rest. Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Forks And Chopsticks Everywhere. When you play the flute you have to tongue it. The bass clef looks like a drunk mathematician tried to draw the Fibonacci sequence."

"Good enough for me," Erik said. He speared another chunk of brownie off her plate and stuck it in his mouth. "Macbeth's being roped into doing something for the Christmas concert at the U. You're my plus one. Did you put nuts in this thing?"

" _Excuse me_?" Lucy yelped. "Your plus one? Says who?"

"Says me ten seconds ago. Go do a dichotic hearing test or something. You didn't answer my question, though,  _are_ there nuts in this? 'Cause that's kinda ingenious," Erik said. He leaned forward to steal more off her plate, but she deftly intercepted his fork with the prongs of hers. Stealing her fucking brownies was a sin enough as is, but to drag her to some stupid music show against her will? Double the sacrilege.

"I'm not going," she said slowly, punctuating each word with a little jerk of her fork. "I  _hate_ concerts. Do you know how many I skipped growing up? I don't even have enough fingers to count them all. And - oh for fucks sake, yes they've got peanuts in them, happy?" Erik sat back, smooshed brownie in hand, and dropped his fork with an air of satisfaction.

Lucy stared at his plate, piled high with eclair's and gummy worms, and raised an eyebrow judgmentally. She'd  _told_ him to take one of each just to see if he liked it, but no, nobody  _ever_ listened to her in this godforsaken building. Not Jackal down the hall when she told him that he needed to change his fire alarm batteries every six months and not every five years (one kitchen fire later and he got a whole new system), not Kyouka two floors down who thought that ammonia and bleach would make for a good cleaning solution despite Lucy's (parroted from Erik) warnings that it was dangerous (the HAZMAT team had a field day dealing with the chlorine gas while Kyouka had been carted off to intensive care), and not Erik who, as of late, seemed to live on her sofa.

The result? One spat out bite of an eclair, and barely touched gummy worms.

"You dragged me to your dad's Christmas ball-"

"You fucking voluntold yourself!"

"Because we're kind of not really dating and I'm ethically obligated to. If we  _weren't_ kind of not really dating, then I wouldn't have had to go and eat the fucking caviar that gave me indigestion, so-"

"I  _told you_ that caviar is disgusting, but no, you just  _had_ to steal a whole tray of that shit-"

"I'm therefore cashing in on the 'were it not for' legal thing and dragging you with me to even the ledger," Erik declared, flicking a gummy worm at her. Reflexes honed by popcorn tossing competitions with Natsu, Gray, and Erza had her angling her head back to catch the gummy worm in her mouth. She hated these stupid things almost as much as concerts, but she  _would not let him see her bow down, no sir._

"Sorano's a horrible influence on you," Lucy grumbled, poking the remains of her brownie moodily. If she dragged her fork over the corner, it kinda looked like Erik's bedhead...shrugging, she continued to hack away at that. Illegal to stab him, but not illegal to stab something that sort of looked like him. She did her psychological training proud.

"I'll pick you up at ten."

"I'll be dressed for a funeral."

* * *

True to her word, Lucy was decked out in all black. She'd gone so far as to take a black Sharpie to the white soles of her boots. Black lipstick would have been overkill, but she owned (and by owned she meant 'Juvia had forgotten it in her makeup drawer after a party') a shade of red that was so dark it could have passed for black, so that would have to do.

Erik, on the other hand, appeared to have been dressed by Santa's closest elves.

"Holy shit," was all she could manage to say upon opening the door, equal parts due to his sweater and the fact that he actually used her door. She peeked over her shoulder quickly - The Rope was still hanging firm.

"Laugh it up," he snarled, tugging at the candy-cane patterned sleeves. "You'll be the one digging Sorano's grave once this is all over."

"She picked that out for you?" Lucy asked as she stepped out into the hall and locked the door.

"Richard did," he replied grimly. "And he's got that whole…" He waved his hand over his face, wrinkling his nose as if he'd just had smelling salts jammed into them.

"Puppy eyes, innocent face thing?" Lucy finished, pressing the down button. She took a second look at his sweater. It was hard to pick out a favourite aspect of it because there was just so much going on. How could she decide between the line of gingerbread men kicking their legs in the air, adorned with gummy hats and canes that made up the center of the sweater, or the gigantic, sparkly tree-topping stars that formed the shoulder pads? The sparkly tinsel that wound around his arms, or the little glittery orbs that hung off the collar? Santa's reindeer dancing around the bottom of the sweater, or the smattering of snowflakes running up the sides? It had to be homemade. There was no way something this deliciously ugly could be bought in stores. Especially not when the tinsel was  _real_ and practically demanding that she run her fingers through it.

"Yeah, that," he grumbled. "And she  _modified it_ , so it's her funeral."

Lucy bit her bottom lip. The sweater was doing absolute wonders for making  _him_ look like a pouty puppy. He was as angry as he was when talking about his co-workers, but right now he was about as intimidating as Natsu when drunk and in his cat onesie. She stuffed her hands in her pockets as they stepped into the elevator. She couldn't pinch his cheeks and coo at him; for one, he would never let her live it down, and for two, she would be joining Sorano in the pit he'd be digging later that night.

They were sort of dating, though, so there was  _probably_ an exception-clause-thing for her. Besides, if he was going to drag her to this stupid concert, she had some liberties to exercise.

Later, though. When she was able to put about three blocks worth of distance between them after the fact.

* * *

Lucy's only warning that danger was impending was the brief moment when the hair on the back of her neck prickled and her ears started feeling fuzzy. She shoved her complimentary drink (a step down from the stuff served at the Konzern, much to both her and Erik's dismay) in the toxicologist's general direction a split second before Natsu barreled into her and sent the both of them toppling to the floor.

"Natsu!" Lucy snarled, catching herself in a push-up position just as her chin was about to do a very uncanny impersonation of a gymnast doing the splits. Her best friend rolled off her and grinned goofily as Gray strolled over with Laxus at his heels.

"If you injured yourself on University property, you could've come up with some plausible lawsuit to get them to cover your tuition," Laxus said in lieu of a proper greeting. Lucy eyed the ground thoughtfully. If she just 'happened' to turn a wet corner, in perfect view of a security camera…

"They'd throw that out in a heartbeat," Sorano drawled, sidling up beside Erik. "I should know, I interned with the University's lawyers back during law school."

Gray twitched. "Lawyer."

"What's he have against lawyers?" Erik muttered, offering her a hand up. Lucy rose and brushed herself off, all the while threading their fingers together. "His dad's a lawyer," she mumbled back. "And his dad sued the  _shit_ out of his foster mom a while back. She went super broke before she passed."

"How astute," Sorano said sweetly. "Lucy, you didn't tell me your friends had brain cells! And the ability to coordinate outfits. How very...2005." Razor sharp blue eyes fell on Gray, drinking him in. Gray didn't bristle like Laxus; no, he seemed quite content to tug at the top her wore and eye her up and down in a way that sent a shiver down her back. Lucy had a horrible feeling, then, one that she  _definitely did not_ want to pursue because the implication was too much for her to be dealing with while stone cold sober.

Natsu crossed his arms over his chest, which was covered in a red leather tube top, and nodded so vigorously his Santa hat almost fell off. "2004, actually, 'cause we're doin' the Mean Girls dance routine, so…"

Gray smacked the back of his head, and this time the hat  _did_ fall off. "She's insulting us, doofus."

"Gray," Laxus said. " _Shirt._ For fucks sake, it's  _leather_ , how did you manage to rip this one off?"

"Oh no," Sorano purred, running a perfectly manicured finger over her glossy lips. "Public indecency is something you can be fined and jailed for. Gray, was it? Come with me, I'll fix that outfit right up. I'm  _very good_ with my hands."

"They're not…" Lucy began.

"Gonna fuck in a closet? Most likely." Erik nodded. "Cover your stump before you hump!" he shouted after them, "And Sorano! It's been a while since you got any action, but remember that Plan B's best within 12 hours after the fucking!"

"Screw you!" she yelled back. "Or better yet, get your girlfriend to do it!"

"There will be no screwing here," Natsu said, positively scandalized. Lucy snorted. Rich coming from  _him_. The amount of times she'd caught him and Yukino Aguira going at it in high school-

Aguira.

Oh.

"Say, Sorano's not got a sister, has she?" Lucy turned to Erik. She lifted her hand just short of her eyes. "About ye tall, bob-cut, name's Yukino and she's as cute as a button?"

"Yeah, why?"

Lucy stared at her best friend somberly. "You're fucked."

"Wh- _oh_." Erik's eye widened as understanding dawned on him. He stared at Natsu, mildly repulsed, eyeing him with a new kind of understanding. " _You're_ Yukino's little...boytoy?"

"Wait!" Natsu screeched, pointing in the direction that his best friend had left. " _That's_ Sorano?! And Gray's gonna  _fuck_ Sorano?! Oh, God, are we gonna be brother-in-laws? Laxus! Laxus, how does this work, you've got a  _super_ fucked family tree-!"

"I think the real question is, is Natsu going to be  _my_  brother-in-law?"

Though only a split second passed, Lucy's heart went still for a full ten minutes before her systems kicked into gear and it was  _racing_. She knew that voice as well as her own. Hell, a full three hours last night had been devoted to watching all his post-Olympic interviews and some of his latest practice videos. Holy shit, holy  _shit_ , this was not happening right now. She'd been dreaming about this moment since his rookie days playing for the minor leagues, and this was  _not_ how it was supposed to go down. She was  _supposed_ to be in his jersey (bought from the official site, thankyouverymuch), paired with the tightest leggings she owned, donning her 'fuck me' pumps, makeup done to match his team colours  _perfectly_ , and with her hair pinned up in one of those super elaborate twists with the curls falling  _just right._

_She was dressed for a fucking funeral and Lyon fucking Vastia was out here looking like a Greek God, not two feet away from her._

"Holy shit," she squeaked. "Lyon. Vastia. Lyon Vastia. Holy  _shit_."

The family resemblance was far too obvious when he smiled at her. Both his and Gray's eyes crinkled in the exact same manner, right down to the number of lines in the corners, and his mouth pulled up mostly lopsided, a dead-ringer for Gray. She could've smacked herself for not realizing it sooner. She knew Lyon Vastia's  _blood type_  (thank you Wikipedia gods) but she couldn't pick this out sooner?

"You must be Lucy," Lyon said. "Gray's mentioned you a few times before. It's nice to finally meet you."

"I need a minute," she said faintly. Was it her or did the room get  _really fucking hot_? Where was a seat when she needed one? Growing up, she swore up down and sideways that she would  _never_ swoon like some of the protagonists did in the classical romances she found in the library, but now? Now, an exception  _had_ to be made.

"While my  _girlfriend_ finishes fangirling-"

"They're not officially dating," Natsu offered (bless the boy), just as Lucy hissed, "I'm  _not_ fangirling."

"...right. I'm Dr Erik Vivas." He extended a hand and smiled in a way that both screamed 'I'm better than you' and 'I'm about to rob you blind in grant money, thanks for attending the gala'. Lyon took a step forward and took his hand, shaking it briefly.

Lucy wasn't  _totally_ blind now that the world had stopped spinning. She was no physiology expert but even  _she_ could see the tendons popping in both their hands as they held on tighter and tighter in some stupid 'game of wills' to see who would get go first.

Knowing them as well as she did, somebody would have to break at least three bones in their hand before they even started to loosen up, so she stomped on Erik's foot and wrangled Lyon's hand out of his, instead holding it between both of hers and pumping it up and down earnestly. "It is  _such_ an honour to meet you!" Lucy gushed. "I've been a huge fan all my life. Fiore should've totally won in the Olympics, by the way. My power went out so I couldn't watch the tying goal live, but I  _did_ review the footage after and Conbolt's goal did  _not_ get into the net. I played it frame-by-frame, like, come on, right? The tie was messy but you did totally crush it later on!"

"That's what I kept trying to tell the judges after, but…" Lyon shrugged. "What can you do. We'll kill Desierto next time."

"You  _so_ will!" Lucy exclaimed. Her free hand pressed against her cheek, absently checking her temperature. She was  _burning_ so she could only imagine how red her face was. She would never wash the hand Lyon was holding. Ever.

Erik slung his arm over her shoulders, pulling her into his side. "Hey, look, it's Macbeth. See you later, Vastia. Lucy-"

"You'll be attending the New Year's party Gray is hosting, right?" Lyon asked.

"Yup!"

"I'll see you both then," he said.

"I take it back," Lucy said dreamily, allowing Erik to steer her through the crowd. "Coming to this was the  _best_ idea ever."

"Oh, please," Erik grumbled.

"Are you  _jealous_?"

"Of who? Vastia? Hell no."

"Uh-huh."

* * *

Macbeth peered around the side of the giant support beam he was hiding behind like a cornered cat, all wide eyed and tensed up.

"I'm gonna die," he hissed, looking more awake than Lucy had ever seen him. His hair was  _tame_ for once, no doubt Sorano's fine work, and held in a thick braid that ended exactly where the lapels of his sleek suit did. The only 'Midnight' touch to him was the lipstick, and even then it was a shade lighter than he normally wore. He looked so  _young_ without the rest of his regular getup that she had to double-take to make sure it was actually  _him._

"How many times have I told you to never say 'yes' around Sorano without somebody awake enough to filter her for you?" Erik lectured. Macbeth pinched his nose and nodded. Lucy had an inkling that he'd been on the receiving end of  _this_ more than once.

"Do you have any booze?" Macbeth turned to Lucy and stared at her chest pointedly. "They never pat them down for flasks. You must be packing."

The blonde crossed her arms and huffed in indignation. So maybe that was true, and maybe she  _knew_ it was true because she'd slipped in a mini bottle of Bacardi in her cleavage a couple times before and gotten away with it, but that  _so_ didn't give his emo ass the right to demand her alcohol.  _Her alcohol_. She was broke! Booze was expensive! Mini Bacardi's were  _very expensive_!

"For your information, not that you need to know, I'm not," she sniffed. " _Erik_ might be, though."

"The professors probably have some shit they distilled in one of the labs," the toxicologist said. "Dunno which one, but we'll find it eventually."

"You have  _one hour_."

"...right, we're gonna hafta go a step up, then."

* * *

"When you said 'step up', I thought you meant running to the nearest LCBO," Lucy said, borderline hysteric. " _Not breaking into professor's offices_! This is illegal!"

Erik dropped the broken pieces of her bobby-pin into his pocket and held his hand out for another. Lucy pulled out the one holding her bangs back and chucked it at his face. She ran her hands through the now loose hair and tugged anxiously. There were no functional security cameras in this particular hallway, mostly because the professors who holed up there found it annoying when the security guards made shitty memes out of their 3 AM zombie walks, so the chances of getting caught and tried in a court of law later on were slim to none. Unless, of course, somebody happened upon them and ratted them out; between her Scary Lucy routine and Erik's general existence, they had  _that_ issue covered, but the point remained that this was very illegal and Lucy had never broken a law in her life.

Except for that time when the lights had gone out and they broke into various rooms in the university looking for cooking supplies.

That explained the deja vu, then.

"Why is it that, whenever I'm with you-"

"Your heart skips a beat and you fall more madly in love with me?"

"No, that I wind up committing a crime. My heart mostly skips a beat because we're always ten seconds away from getting thrown in jail and that would look  _terrible_ on a transcript."

Erik let out a rather victorious ' _hah!_ ' when the lock clicked and the door to one Dr Porlyusica Dreyar's (holy shit, Laxus's...something taught here?) office swung open. It was messy, but  _neat_ messy. There were piles of paper everywhere, but they seemed to be organized in some weird colour code if the mugs stacked on top of them were any indication. One wall was chock full of framed certifications - she caught at  _least_ two doctorates hammered in there. Erik maneuvered the room like a champ, dodging mini-stacks on the ground without even looking where he was stepping. He stopped next to the gigantic bookshelf behind her desk and tilted his head, eyeing the third row critically.

"She taught you, didn't she?"

"Physical chem in my third year," he responded. "We hated each other, so obviously she took it on herself to become my master's and PhD supervisor. Stupid hag."

"Which would explain how you know where she hides her booze," Lucy said, nodding to herself. It made sense. While Mard wasn't one of her psych professors, she'd been to his office so often she knew where he hid his more exotic tea collection (in a hollowed out Greek copy of  _The Iliad_ ).

"Who do you think spent most of his grad days restocking that shit?" Erik retorted, pulling out a textbook as thick as her head and flicking it open. He stuck his hand in the hole between 'Formation Constants' and something written in Greek script, patting around for a second. He replaced to book and moved on to his next target - 'Iron'. Lucy leaned her hip against Porlyusica's desk, careful to avoid disturbing anything.

"You must've spent a lot of time in here," she mused. "Any fun stories to share?"

"See the tick marks on the calendar there? That's how many times people have been caught necking it in here this month. When I was her minion, I kept track." Lucy snorted once she caught sight of his nauseated face. She didn't know who to feel more sorry for - Erik, who had to deal with  _that_ , or the poor fucks who got cockblocked by the most terrifying GA to walk the planet if Sorano was to be believed.

"You never had to give a tick for yourself?" Lucy asked. Erik craned his head back and grinned wickedly. "Why, Lucy, if you wanted to make out like a couple of horny teens in my ex-professor's office, all you had to do was  _ask_."

"I absolutely do-" her sputters died out as he boxed her in against the desk. How in the  _hell_ had he moved so quickly? One of her hands drifted back a couple centimeters, pausing when they hit a stack. She couldn't move back; if she did, the pile of lab reports  _and_ the full mug of coffee would go careening off the desk.

She was effectively trapped, and she  _really_ didn't care.

"You absolutely do…?" he repeated, leaning in so close that she could taste the shitty energy drink he had bought at the gas station on his breath.

There were a million shades of purple that made up his eye, each one a wisp of nebula from a brilliant star. She wanted to badly to trace all the fine, sharp angles of his face - with her hands, her lips, her very  _being_ , so she could commit it to memory in the same way that breathing was. In and out. Expand and contract. Erik and Lucy. He bore in closer still, pinning her to the desk with his hips (oh, if that didn't send a thrill of  _something_ up her spine) and cupping the curve of her jaw delicately. "You absolutely  _do_ …"

"Want to," she whispered, settling her hands on his hips and sliding up, up, up until her elbows started digging into her own sides. "I really-" a brush of her lips against the corner of his "- _really_ want to."

Everything was a blur of senses. The barest touches of the bows of their upper lips, his heart pounding so heavily that she could feel it down to his sixth ribs, stubble scoring her skin, surgeon steady hands tilting her head up, need running so deep that her skin prickled in desperation to get closer and closer. She was going to  _kill_ him if he didn't press in any further. Their lips were  _touching_ and she wanted (needed) him to do something before she burst right there and then.

"Not only do you have the audacity to break into my office, but you do it  _after_ you graduate to make out with some girl," Porlyusica groused. " _Unbelievable_."

Scratch that, Lucy was going to kill  _her_ , Laxus be damned. His family tree was so confusing that one missing member would be no skin off his back.

"I'll kill you," Erik declared rather blandly as he wrenched himself away from her.

 _What is it with you two and always getting interrupted like this? And they're always from_ his  _group of friends, too._

 _Oh,_ now  _you decide to speak up._

_I was giving you two some privacy, sheesh!_

"Why are you two here? There are empty labs to use for this." Lucy furrowed her brow as she took in Porlyusica's impressive six foot frame. The height, the sneer, the cold eyes...it all screamed Laxus, but the pink hair? That was  _way_ too Natsu.

"Are you related to Natsu Dragneel by any chance?" the psychology major blurted out before she could stop herself. Porlyusica, briefly taken aback, nodded. "He's a cousin's grandkid, why?"

"The pink hair had me thinking. That would make Laxus...Natsu's...third cousin?"

"Hell if I know. Or care. You, porcupine," Porlyusica barked, "You still haven't told me why you broke in."

"Where's the vodka? I checked all the regular books," Erik said, waving at the one he'd been eyeing before the not-kiss. The older doctor snorted, muttering about 'mini me's' as she pulled a copy of 'IUPAC' off the bottom shelf and held it out to him.

"Decided to change it since my GA is more interested in draining the supply than replenishing it," she sneered. "I expect you to pull your weight after. Now get out, you both stink. And porcupine! That sweater is  _ridiculous_. Send me pictures later."

"Fuck you!" He hollered as he exited the office with a flask at his hip. "I'll fill this shit with water for interrupting, stupid old bat…"

* * *

The auditorium was jam packed and pitch black, for which Lucy was grateful. It meant that nobody could see her neon red face  _or_ Erik's fingers tracing some chemical sequence or another on the back of her neck.

Except, of course, Sorano.

"You two  _totally_ fucked," she giggled from beside Erik.

"The bat cockblocked me," he snapped. "And we weren't going to  _fuck._  Not in  _that_ room, ugh. I think the sofa still has a pizza stain I left on it from my fourth year."

"Does she  _ever_ clean that place?"

"No. I saw a pile of midterms from my class. That was like, ten years ago." His fingers dragged down her spine just a little, and he started his ministrations all over again. The same loopy repetitive pattern. Idly, she followed the motions with her own hand against her thigh.

It took about fifteen cycles before she realized  _it was his name_.

 _Trace yours on his?_ Inner Cana suggested.

_Normally not a bad idea, but Macbeth's on now and I'm morally obligated to pay attention to that._

The curtains pulled back, drawing with them the chatter of the audience. Macbeth stood just behind the reach of the spotlight, illuminated enough that he could be seen, but not enough that she could make out any distinctive facial features. He placed a violin beneath his chin and held the bow aloft.

Then, he started to play.

Lucy had attended hundreds of concerts growing up. Sat in the Dress Circle and listened to the most elite musicians perform their craft; orchestras and soloists, young and old, prodigies and those who had bled for the opportunity to play. They were beautiful, there was no denying that, but she couldn't ever recall being so enraptured in a performance before.

Every chord Macbeth struck pulled on her from the inside, like his violin was the moon and her blood the churning tides. Her breath was controlled solely by the speed at which he played; it was as if every draw of the bow expanded and collapsed her lungs. He was the Pied Piper, and the only thing keeping her from walking to the stage was Erik's arm around her shoulders. Unable to break her trance, she could only observe him out of the corner of her eye.

He was  _proud_. Smirking (because smiling would be so beyond him) like he usually did, but despite the dark, she could see the brief wobble to his lips. She wondered how many times he'd heard Macbeth play this song. How many hours they had spent as a group holed up in a room with Macbeth fumbling his way through a song on a violin as tall as he was. How long it had taken him to master his first tune and put on his first performance and buy an appropriately aged violin with his own money. From a private audience of four to a full concert hall, all in the blink of an eye.

"It's beautiful," Lucy whispered.

Erik tightened his grip in silent agreement.

* * *

"That was  _amazing_!" Sorano wailed, smacking Macbeth with her damp handkerchief. "You morose bastard, you made me cry!"

Said morose bastard was eyeing the emergency exit longingly. If it weren't for the death clamp Sorano had on his person, Lucy had no doubt he would have booked it to weather the weather the  _second_ he spotted their rag-tag group coming to meet him backstage. They were the lesser of two evils, no doubt. It was either he deal with the emotional audience members who wanted his picture and autograph and future children, or one sobbing lawyer who would likely dye her hair black before ever thinking of having kids with him.

"She has emotions?" Macbeth said blankly. "Wow."

"It was a message of pure love!" Richard roared, scaring the shit out of a group of elves behind him.

"Dope as hell," Sawyer agreed. "I'm gonna need a full mixtape from you soon, dude."

"I'll buy a copy," Lucy said, "Hell, I'll even help you manage sales if you decide to go professional."

"Thanks, but this isn't something I'd ever turn into a career," Macbeth replied, " _Way_ too many people to deal with. Not enough time to sleep."

"Because physics is a sleeper career," Erik scoffed. He extended his fist and bumped knuckles with him. "Lazy fucker. You just don't wanna deal with the spotlight."

Macbeth tapped his temple and shrugged. "I sleep and the math does itself."

"Which is probably why you failed half your math tests in middle school. 'Show your work' was a guideline for you," Sawyer laughed.

Lucy shook her head and watched the group squabble with a smile. Macbeth was a master of the annoyed facade, scowling and slouching, sighing often and rolling his eyes when appropriate. But even she couldn't miss the way he averted his gaze to keep himself from laughing at their gentle ribbing, or the fond tilt to his lips that vanished whenever anyone paid a little too much attention. Her hand slipped into her pocket and retrieved her phone. She swiped on the camera option on the lockscreen and raised the phone as discreetly as possible to take a picture of the scene. For posterity, she told herself. So they would always have this moment at the click of a button.

 _Macbeth's such a tsundere, no?_ Inner Cana cooed.  _Oh, I could just eat him up!_

_...wait, if you're a manifestation of my mind and you're gushing over Macbeth, does that mean I'm subconsciously attracted to him?_

_No. We can just appreciate a cutie when we see it._

"What's with the dazed look on your face?" Erik called. "Your dad send you an email again?"

"Even worse," she deadpanned, "The pharmacy says the antacid pills they owe me are on a backlog, so now I can't eat Flamin' Hot Cheetos for dinner."

"Dinner's on me," Richard declared, drawing those within reach - Macbeth, Sorano, and Sawyer- into a hug that pulled them off the ground. Erik pushed Lucy in front of him, a makeshift shield.

"Pub at 9?" Erik asked. "'Cause I gotta get a headstart on making the bat's booze."

Ah. That.

Chips from the vending machine it was, then.

* * *

"So how many hours does it take to do this?" Lucy asked. She sat perched on a lab bench, swinging her legs back and forth into the open coat locker. Two empty bags of All Dressed chips were on her left, and a pile of assorted flavours sat on her right. She pulled out a ketchup chip from the mini-bag in her hand and popped in her mouth, sighing contentedly. All she needed now was a bottle of VitaminWater to wash it all down and it was like she was back in the eleventh grade and studying for biology.

"Days," Erik corrected. "Takes about a week. I'm just gonna get the basic shit done now and then come back to do the rest later."

For some reason she always imagined it to be a much shorter process, especially given how much vodka (judging by the bag of potatoes in the locker beneath her) was consumed on a daily basis. Then again, the industrial vodka-making process probably had more complex machinery to speed up the process. How It's Made likely had an episode on it somewhere online.

"Need any help?" Lucy offered. She didn't have to look up from her selection of chips to know Erik's eyebrow had joined his hairline. There was no way he was going to let her touch whatever he was measuring out, but it was the thought that counted and all that.

_Dorito's._

_Nah, I'm feeling Hickory Sticks…_

"Yeah, actually, you can help measure out the enzymes."

Lucy licked her fingers clean of chip dust and swore vengeance. Porlyusica wanted pictures of him in that ugly sweater and by the gods, she would be getting it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	12. 12:00:11 AM

Lucy eyed the letters strung over the couch critically. There was something horribly off about them and it had nothing to do with the jarring colour scheme. Some were solid colours, some diamond patterned. Half had glitter that was slowly finding a new home in the ratty nylon fabric below, and the other half was blindingly shiny. It was evident that either Natsu or Gray (or, knowing them, both) had gone through great pains to find as many different versions of 'HAPPY NEW YEAR' strings at the dollar store as they could, tore off letters at random, and then spliced them to create the monstrosity before her.

"Erza," she called, "Is it me or is something...off about this?"

Erza placed the decanter of spiked punch on the coffee table and joined her. "I see what you mean," Erza said. "But I also don't."

With that, the two of them tilted their heads and rolled their weight to their right hip. Gajeel passed by, two gigantic kegs in hand, and paused at the scene. His studded brows furrowed as he sidled up behind the both of them, dropping the kegs at his feet. "The fuck? That…"

"Makes no sense?" Lucy offered.

"But complete sense at the same time?" Erza said. The mechanic nodded. With that, the three of them fell into the same pose and continued to stare.

"This is confusing," Rogue declared from Lucy's left. To her credit, she only grabbed onto Gajeel's bicep for the fifteen seconds it took for her heart to calm down versus, say, climbing him like a koala did a tree.  _I'm buying him a collar with a bell on it for his birthday_ , she vowed.

 _You say that every year,_ Inner Cana retorted.

_New Years Resolution, then._

_Uh-huh._

"He swapped the 'e' and 'a' in 'year'!" Cana yelled from the kitchen. "Took me an hour to get it, no worries!"

There was a collective ' _ohhhh_ ' before they broke off to finish setting up. Gajeel picked up the kegs and placed them on the beer pong table, and Erza hauled the decanter off somewhere where it was less likely to be knocked over in a drunken brawl; less likely, of course, being a relative statement because of the unholy offspring of Murphy's Law known as 'Fairy Tail's Law' - anything that can break, will break.

"Done setting up?" Rogue inquired politely.

"Yup! The jello shots have been prepped and should be ready by the time we get into the swing of things. How about you?"

He held up a ball of lights. "I'm better prepared to untangle the universe than this."

Lucy winced. "Need help?"

" _Please_ ," he said fervently. They settled on the couch, dropping the ball between them, and began poking and prodding it for a loose connection to start pulling at. Lucy found the plug and started the arduous effort of figuring out where it went and how to get it to point B. She knew for a damn  _fact_ that she had very neatly separated the Christmas lights into piles by size and then used twist ties to keep them straight and in order last year. This meant one of two things: Natsu (or Gray) had decided to dig them out and put them up by himself, only to fail miserably when they got jumbled together (understandable given that the lights, much like headphones in a pocket, were programmed to do so), or there were decoration gremlins in the storage area who had done the deed at some point during the year. Given how tightly the lights were knotted, she was leaning on the gremlin theory.

"Sting not joining us?" Lucy asked conversationally.

"He's going to try and flirt with a nurse to get Wendy off her shift early," he replied. At her amused expression, he rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm well aware I'm dating an idiot."

"He's...driven," she said.

"He's unbelievably stupid," Rogue corrected. "But...admirable."

"It's funny, 'cause Mest was going to try and do the same thing," Lucy laughed, pressing the back of her hand over her mouth as the biology major slapped his forehead and sighed deeply. "You gonna send him a text?"

"No," Rogue grumbled, tugging his string viciously. "Let them both have at it. Are your graduated friends going to be coming?"

"A little later. Macbeth said he was baking brownies, except Sawyer slipped in some pot, so now Sorano's forcing them to remake it all," Lucy said. She'd dipped from Erik's apartment not long after the lawyer had whipped a chair at both their heads. The sight of Macbeth using the fridge door as a weak shield against his best friend was a sight that she would cherish until her dying day, especially when coupled with the three part soundtrack of Erik yelling 'worldstar', Sawyer screeching for mercy, and Richard offering to go buy some brownies from the store.

"Damn, we missin' pot brownies?" Bacchus interrupted. He was lounging under the beer pong table, suspiciously close to the kegs, and nursing a screwdriver in one hand, the other creeping up to the tap. Gajeel smacked his hand away with the pointy tip of a knife.

"The only drug goin' on in this house is the alcohol," Gajeel said. "If I catch  _anyone_ near anythin' that ain't legal, y'all're gonna be lickin' the porch clean, we clear?"

"Killjoy."

Natsu poked his head out from around the corner. "Anybody mind running to the store for some extra supplies?" he asked sheepishly. "Gray and I got into a bit of a tussle…"

* * *

It had taken a half tank of gas and twenty minutes of arguing with the GPS over toll routes, but Lucy and Rogue eventually managed to gather the requisite supplies. While she wouldn't have minded popping by one of the 24-hour superstores and getting the off-brand stuff, Rogue had other plans; the kind that involved coupon apps and forums for the cheapest bargains. A shocking one hundred dollars in savings, an armful of bags, and two hours later found the duo shuffling up the driveway to Gray's house.

The party had already started, if the incomprehensible music was any indication. The bass was so heavy that the words were a messy jumble feeding up to her more through her feet than her ears. The gaps between the houses, a half kilometer at the very least, was their only saving grace from an annoyed neighbour calling in a noise complaint. Granted, it was textbook horror movie intro complete with virgin sacrifices for the picking on New Years Eve, but the benefits really did outweigh the risks. Besides, there was not one soul in the house that would pass up being sacrificed to the devil if it meant avoiding the next semester.

Lucy toed open the door gently and gagged. The stench of alcohol was so potent that she was starting to get a little tipsy off the fumes alone. She breathed in the crisp, evening air (likely the last of the fresh air she'd have for the night) and held it in as she powered through the throng of people. The crowd parted easily with a swing of her makeshift battering rams, so getting to the kitchen was not as much of an issue as she thought it would have been. The puddles of liquid on the floor, on the other hand…

"Your hardwood is fucked," she informed Gray, dropping her bags on the kitchen table. Her best friend choked back a whine with a heavy gulp of beer. His other hand grasped the bottle Cana was nursing and he made his way through half of that before responding.

"I'm blaming shitty shingles and heavy snowfall," Gray muttered.

"Juvia has cleaned up all the water," Juvia said as she walked into the kitchen. The hand that wasn't holding a pile of sopping wet paper towels was busy twisting her curly blue hair up into a messy bun that she clipped in place with a clothespin. "Does Gray have a vacuum cleaner Juvia can borrow? It will help with the moisture."

Gray looked ready to lick her stiletto's clean. "Yes. I owe you my firstborn. Follow me. For the vacuum, I mean, not the firstborn. Not that I have one of those yet." Juvia raised her eyebrow delicately but followed him to the storage closet without a peep.

Lucy shook her head and opened the fridge, clicking her tongue at the choices available. She pulled out the empty cardboard containers of Smirnoff Ice ( _fuckers finished it in the first half hour,_ Inner Cana said glumly) and threw them in the general direction of the recycling bin. She suspected a lot of the good stuff was located in the coolers in the living room, but there had to be at least one or two gems tucked away in the pyramids of Corona and Budweiser. Lucy closed the fridge and opened the freezer at the bottom, cheering as she spotted her bounty. A little known fact amongst adults-in-training was that good quality vodka (Absolut, Grey Goose, Smirnoff, etc.) could be left in the freezer for as long as you wanted and it wouldn't freeze. Where regular water would freeze at temperatures lower than zero degrees, the addition of ethanol lowered the freezing point of water meaning it would need to be much, much colder for it to freeze. The stronger the alcohol the lower the freezing point, and so something in the threshold of 40% would be safe from the ambient temperature of the freezer. She suspected Bacchus had been the one to keep the bottle safely hidden under the bags of frozen veggies, but he was no match for her retained chemistry trivia.

Thanking Erik and her lucky stars ( _might as well be the same thing at this point_ ), she spun off the top and counted three shallow swallows before pulling back and sighing deeply. Her teeth hurt from the sudden cold, but another couple sips would have her well adjusted to it. She pressed the bottle to her neck and sighed softly. As chilly as it was outside the house was  _boiling_. Gray would have to lower the temperature soon or people would be dropping left and right. Perhaps that was what the frozen veggie packets were for; there were way too many for casual stocking.

Her moment of bliss was shattered by someone roughly grabbing the bottle from her hands with a relieved 'thank fuck'. Scowling, she whirled around (bad idea, bad idea) and grabbed the fridge handles for support. Her complaints died on her tongue as soon as the aftertaste of the vodka kicked in.

Unbuttoned, wrinkled shirt over a muscle shirt. Sweats that hung low on his hips. Erik  _looked_ like a university student. She'd seen him in casual wear before, but the backdrop of shitty EDM and swaying, drunk twenty-somethings enhanced the image and threw her for a loop. She could see him swaggering up to a house party, cases of beer in hand, and painting the town red for a couple hours. Her eyes caught a glint of gold and she squealed before she could stop herself. "You wore them!"

"Shut up," he snapped, tugging her ear subconsciously. "I was rushed for time."

Lucy had discovered his piercings out of sheer dumb luck. The day before Christmas they'd been watching Home Alone reruns on TV, piled up on her couch with a bowl of over-buttered popcorn split between the two. She'd been running a hand through his hair and drifted a little too low. Her finger caught his earlobe, detected the little hole in them, and the rest was history. It had been a pain in the ass like no other to find  _anything_ in stores on Christmas Eve, but she'd proudly presented him with a beautiful pair of golden hoops, no bigger than the circumference of her pinky, on the day of. They were a  _lot_ hotter on him than she'd anticipated.

 _And so Icarus falls,_ Inner Cana sighed.

 _That makes_ absolutely  _no sense._

_You're Icarus and you flew too close to the sun that is Erik in hoops. Now you're falling. Ta-dah._

"I take it Sorano fixed the brownie problem?" she asked. Erik snorted and took another chug of vodka, perching on the glass table next to the fridge and saying, "Yeah. She  _also_ managed to fix my drywall. By that I mean there are three new holes that need fixing."

"You could always place some frames over them. Like, picture frames. Of pictures." Lucy blinked and shook her head. There were words in her  _head_ and she knew what they were, but when it came down to  _saying_ the words, her mouth felt too fuzzy to say anything big. Big words meant slurring so small words it was. But even the small words felt weird, like they were wrong because she knew the big ones.

"How much have you had to drink?"

Lucy held up her hand and pressed her thumb and index finger together. She pulled them apart slowly, until they were about a ring finger apart in width. "This much."

"In one go."

"Yeah!"

"You're an idiot."

"I'm a fucking G is what I am."

* * *

"Toto!" Lucy shouted. "Hey! Hey, Toto!"

He'd seen her piss drunk before and judging by the amused look on his face, he was glad to see that the duty of keeping her from eating all the sour key rings fell upon someone that was  _not_ him. Erik stood behind her, one finger stuck through the belt loop on the back of her shorts, and scowled at him.

"Kaji."

"Vivas."

"Heartfilia," Lucy said impatiently. "Now, back to what I was saying. Toto, do you know where the peach bellinis are? Juvia said you brought some."

"In the cooler back there." He jerked his finger towards a red cooler stacked between a blue and green one. "You sure you're good to have one, though?"

"I'll live." She waved her hand dismissively and tugged Erik's finger away. The walk to the cooler tower was going to be a tough one. There were people. So many people. They were pushed up against each other and percolating, and there was no room for her to filter through. Except, of course, between their legs. Shrugging, she dropped down and assumed The Position. Army crawling was going to be a bitch with how tight her clothes were against her skin, and her boobs were bound to slip out of their designated seats, but it was the best option so she breathed in deeply and took off.

People's feet fucking  _stank._ If they were wearing shoes (godless heathens, the lot of them) then she could whiff whatever was stuck to the bottom of them, be it dog poop or lawn fertilizer. If they were wearing socks (on thin fucking ice) then their sweat clogged up her nostrils and had her gagging. If they were barefoot (as it should be) she was treated to athlete's foot, cracked heels, and more sweat.  _Her_ feet didn't smell. Did they? She paused in her crawl and drew her foot up to sniff it, a task she soon realized was  _really fucking hard_ when avoiding beating trampled to death.

"What the hell," Macbeth said.

Lucy rolled over and stuck her foot in the air. "Do my feet smell?"

"I don't have a foot fetish. Go away, you gremlin. Erik," he raised his voice ever so slightly. "Do you have a foot fetish we need to talk about?"

Lucy flipped over to her stomach and continued the few feet between her and her cooler. She scrambled up and was met with problem number two. The cooler was between two coolers. Full coolers. And the blue one on top had more coolers on top of it.

_Jenga or no jenga…_

_Bad._

She stood up on her tippy toes and grabbed the top cooler, pulling it down so it mostly was sat on her breasts. Carrying heavy things was easy when you had a built in shelf to level them off. The second cooler was heavier than the first, but she managed to whittle down all three layers before she hit the jackpot.

"Bellini," she cooed, cracking open a can of the sugary goodness. She'd regret this in the morning. There was absolutely nothing worse than the morning breath of someone who had spent their final 'awake' hours knocking back fruity drinks. She finished the can in a record breaking two minutes and then peered into the cooler once more. She couldn't finish all of Juvia's bellini's. That was just  _mean_. Toto's gross-ass beer, on the other hand…

"Wanna shotgun?" Sting pulled up beside her. He held a knife up in the air and grinned. "Best two of three?"

"You're on!" Lucy yelled. Shotgunning was a time honoured tradition in their group, and they were all honour bound to cede victory to the one who spilled the least amount of beer, finished their can first, and burped the loudest. Three cans in a  _row_ would be  _epic._

 _And incredibly stupid,_ Inner Cana admitted.  _But, hey, who cares._

Sting stabbed their beer cans and placed his lips over the leaking hole. Lucy followed in suit. They bobbed their heads three times, popped the tab, and then the beer was pouring into her mouth faster than she could swallow.

_Spitters are quitters!_

The first second or two were a torrential explosion from hell, like a dam had burst, but she found her rhythm almost immediately, holding her jaw open as wide as possible and allowing the beer to slip down her throat despite the acrid kick. Seven seconds. She grabbed the next can and stabbed it. This one went down easier because she was prepped from the first, and the third one was like drinking water. She stomped on the cans at her feet and pumped her arms in the air. "Fuck yes!"

"Kay, you win this," Sting gasped. His face scrunched up a split second before his cheeks bulged and he let out a roaring, gaseous burp. Even a foot away she could smell it. This burp single-handedly killed the dinosaurs. Lucy was going to top this burp, if the chest-burster feeling in her was any indication. She could feel it rising up as a single force that tore at her throat before ripping to life like a Beyblade. Burp after noxious burp filled the gap between them. This burp was like the oxygen that came to life and murdered 75% of the planet before cells figured out how to deal with it.

_Winner!_

"That's disgusting," Erik grumbled. His finger fell into her belt loop once more, tugging at it. "Come on, you need to sit down before you throw up…"

"Flip cup!" she squealed, running for the table. Somebody had unhinged a door from one of the rooms and propped it up on top of two stacks of beer boxes. She filled in the gap next to Gray and bumped her hip against his. "Olayyy, olay, olay, olayyy!"

"Olay!" he roared. "Flip cup!"

She grabbed her solo cup and  _chugged_. It was harder than shotgunning because the beer was plowing into her mouth in that. Here, she relied on nothing but her ability to suppress her gag reflex and gravity. She slammed her cup upside down on the edge and flicked the end. Too much force. The cup fell. She lined it with the edge again and braced her finger on the bottom. Across from her, Lisanna Strauss seemed to be struggling with her cup as much as she was. Lucy flipped the cup and cheered as it landed on its bottom. Gray immediately started on his, as did Sorano across from him.

"No more," Erik said, yanking her to his chest. "Come on, midnight's in fifteen minutes. We should relax until then."

"Wait, Macbeth's in fifteen minutes? Are you going to his house?"

"No. Midnight like 12 AM."

" _Oooh_."

"You are  _so_ tanked," Erik said as he drew her to the dancefloor. Somebody had set the playlist to slower pop hits, and many people had settled into a slow back and forth that the two soon fell into. Lucy dropped her head on his chest and sighed. He was so  _warm_. It was through sheer willpower alone that she didn't turn into a wet noodle in his grasp and drop all her weight on him. A little bit wouldn't hurt, though. He could hold her up.

"I'm fuzzy," she mumbled. "And I won."

"You won't remember anything from tonight, though."

"You can tell me tomorrow," she said. Keeping her eyes open was hard. She didn't wanna sleep but resting her eyes for a second didn't sound like a bad idea. Erik poked her back. "Stay awake, stupid, only a few more minutes."

"Ugh, fine...what're your new year's resolves?"

" _Resolutions_. I dunno. Not murder my coworkers. You?"

Lucy raised her head and stared at his eyes. Eye. Eyes. There were two. She blinked. One. Blinked again. Two.

"Oi."

"Oh, right." She patted her cheek and then pressed two fingers into his chin. "I'm gonna love you."

"You don't already? Damn, I knew you were using me," he said dramatically, clutching his chest. Lucy scowled and thwapped him twice. Once more for good measure. "No, silly. I'mma tell you I do."

"There's no time limit on-"

"I love you," she said seriously. "And I wanna have, like, two babies with you."

"What?" he managed to choke out. Lucy laughed. He sounded so  _funny._ Like he'd just gone through puberty and his voice was starting to crack for the first time.

"You said in the lab, three babies were too many. So two babies it is."

"One baby, one cat," Erik bargained. He appeared slightly less surprised now. That wouldn't do. She  _liked_ it when he was surprised. His face was  _much_ cuter like that. Not that he didn't have a cute face already, but when his eyes got wide and his mouth went into a little 'o' she could see a whole new... _something_ within him. Like she'd just cracked an ancient vault and found a gold dial to turn. She wasn't sure what was behind the dial but damn if it wasn't nice to look at.

 _Kiss him?_ Inner Cana suggested.

_A'ight._

No indirect kisses, no screeching best friends in barnyards, and no crotchety old chemists would be stopping them this time. Hell, not even a horse manifesting in the living room would stop her this time. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, pressing her lips to his with a resounding smack.

There were no fireworks or fluttering bellies or 'sense of completion'. He didn't taste like musk and sex and the air before rainfall. She couldn't tell whose breath tasted worse, but she was willing to bet the fruity death that was hers was giving his a run for their money. Still, she pressed herself closer and grinned.  _This_ was a long time coming and god above if she didn't feel a little bit smug over the fact that  _she_ had initiated it.

" _Two babies_ ," Lucy purred. "This was fun."

Erik kissed her again. " _One baby._ Two cats."

"Deal," she agreed, "For now, anyways."

"Oi, they're kissing before the clock hit twelve!" Natsu yelled.

"Oh, shut up." Lyon smacked the back of his head. "There's ten seconds until it does."

"You should always enter the new year the way you intend for it to go," Lucy said sagely.

"Sounds good to me," Erik replied. He leaned down and-

"Holy  _shit_!" Cana shrieked. "Bacchus is fucking  _down_! Wendy! Wendy, come look at this!"

12:00:11 AM.

"Our year isn't gonna be a year of cockblocks, is it?" Erik asked mournfully. "Because then I'll have to drop my promise to not murder anyone."

 _What a baby,_ Inner Cana said affectionately.

_Adorable._

_You should fuck him._

_Not_ now _, we just kissed!_

 _But you_ will.

_Shut up._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


	13. Epilogue

"Now, remember, you can take the humanities if you want but if you get into liberal arts then you're no longer my favourite. Got it?" Erik said sternly.

Six-month-old Erika burped, spit up on his sweater, and let out a gurgle that gave a clogged toilet a run for its money. Erik rolled his eyes heavenward, mouthed 'thank you', and then shouted (perhaps a little too gleefully), "Lucy! Your kid upchucked on my sweater! Too bad, eh?"

"Good thing I made an extra!" His wife shouted back. "It's on the ironing table!"

"Good thinking," Erik said loudly. Then, turning to his daughter, he grumbled, "I should've listened to your Uncle Macbeth and married my mass spec instead…"

* * *

"Oh. My. God," Sorano cooed, throwing her bags in Erik's general direction and making a grab for Erika. "You are absolutely  _adorable_. Look at you! She's smiling! Oh, if it wasn't for that and the hair I would've bet my entire bank account you weren't that ugly grouch's kid!"

"Gee, thanks, Angel," Erik said sarcastically. "I could say the same thing about Silver right there."

"It's  _Christmas_ ," Lucy stressed as she took their coats to hang. "Be nice you two."

"I don't think their code has that line," Gray joked.

Erik exhaled through his nose slowly and counted backwards from ten. Of all the days to forget his rubber band...not that  _that_ would help, seeing as he could barely brush his fingers together at the moment. He contemplated dropping the bags, just to see Sorano lose her shit while wearing that  _ridiculous_ feathery silver gown. As ugly as his family's matching Christmas sweaters were (a terrifyingly accurate replica of The Thing from the year he and Lucy had met), they were still  _fitting_ for the season. Sorano's, on the other hand, looked like their brat had gotten his hands on some craft glue and a bag of feathers and there went their $1k+ outfits. Said brat did look rather cute in his poofy feather suit, he had to admit, but then again all kids did right up until they learned to talk.

"Looks like we're right on time!" Yukino exclaimed. Erik twitched. If she was here then-

"Yo! Droopy-eyes! Luce! Hey, Cobra, thanks man!" Natsu cheerfully dropped two duffle bags on top of the pile in his arms and immediately wheeled around to Gray. "You look like a fu-er, you look like you rolled around in swan sheddings."

"You came dressed as a fireplace with stockings on," Gray shot back. "Soot mouth."

"What'd you say?! You little-"

Igneel 'Iggy' Dragneel, the spitting image of his father in both looks and personality at the ripe old age of 10 months, stretched out his chubby arm as far as it would go and yanked his cousin's hair. Silver bit his knuckles, and Iggy, predictably, screamed.

"Oi!" Natsu yelled, "Gray, teach your kid some manners! He bit my kid, if Iggy gets rabies-"

" _Rabies_?" Sorano snarled. "How dare you-"

" _Your_ kid started it!"

"Guys, please."

"Silver acted in  _self-defense_. I can cite about six different laws right now that-"

"Oh, shut up you devil-swan, this is a lawless zone.  _Your_ kid-"

" _Guys_."

Erik thumped his head against the wall rhythmically, willing himself to get a concussion. What was it Dr Kaur had told him all those years ago at one of his checkups? Once you had one you were more likely to get one again? Maybe at the ripe old age of 34 it'd be easier to get one. Maybe he'd bleed out and die. At least then he could avoid the hell that was the Fullbuster/Dragneel family.  _God_  he was starting to regret not picking up Wahl Icht's evening shift.

"Fuck! Erik, she spit up on me!"

On second thought, worth it.

* * *

Erik remembered very little of his generic wedding vows, but somewhere in there was a cheesy line about 'protecting you, Lucy, from harm and discomfort blah blah blah for as long as we both shall blah blah blah'. He supposed that extended to steering her away from mediating the next great Erza versus Natsu/Gray, but she had said the exact same vows back to him and since  _he_ didn't want to deal with it, her 'get over here and help' look went largely ignored in favour of spearing another pig in a blanket into his mouth.

"So, did you hear about the APOE4-?"

"One, that's neurophysiology, not chemistry. Two, we're not friends," Erik cut Totomaru off. "Stop talking to me. Why are you here."

His fellow chemist raised a brow that disappeared into his two-toned hairline. "Because Lucy is friends with Juvia and I?"

"Unfortunate, but I meant next to me. Talking. And breathing."

"Annoying you is fun."

The toxicologist privately vowed to get some itching powder to slip down the cow's reindeer sweater. He scanned the room idly, looking for somebody to use as a shield against The People. Juvia, Cana, and Wendy took up the whole three-seater, a bag of pretzels split between them. Mest and Sorano were busy dissecting the legal inaccuracies of whatever police procedural's Christmas special was playing (judging by the colour tone, it was one of the Law and Order's), a gaggle of children on foam puzzle piece mats to their immediate left; they were engrossed by the puppet show Richard, Sawyer, and Yukino had put together using the contents of his sock drawer. Macbeth was asleep (of course) behind the recliner, Sting and Mira were waging war against the turkey stuffing with Rogue as supervisor, and Mard was marking papers next to the present pile; the look on Plue's face said the good professor's students were about to get an email with the subject line 'my friend's dog ate your homework'.

To make an incredibly long story short, his head was hurting too much to deal with everyone present for longer than five minutes and he needed an excuse to go take a nap.

Spotting one in the form of an infant sucking on her fist, Erik declared, "I'm gonna change Erika's diaper."

"Oh, shit, good reminder." Totomaru swallowed the last of his bell pepper slice and brushed his fingers on his pants. "Mind if I-?"

"Fuck off."

* * *

"I hate people," Erik declared. Erika stared at him, wide-eyed and bushy tailed. Her diaper was dry but the excuse bought him  _maybe_ fifteen, twenty minutes of radio silence before somebody came up to use their changing table. He made a mental note to leave a sticky note on there to remind people to wipe down after.

"Amendment. I hate most people. The ones down there are okay most of the time. Except your Uncle Totomaru, he's a fucking  _prick_." Erik poked his daughter (that still felt so weird to say) on the nose. "No swearing until you're 14. 10 if your mom isn't nearby."

"Stop corrupting her," Lucy said, flopping down next to him. He hadn't noticed her slip into the room, an unfortunate side-effect of the over-oiled hinges.

"Shouldn't you be downstairs keeping them from burning the house down?" Erik asked. He tucked his hand under his head, flexing his bicep. Lucy scooted up a little so she could rest her head on the makeshift pillow and sighed. "Natsu spilled his drink onto Mard's papers. He lost his shit in a very...Mard-esque way."

"They dead?"

"Jellal is talking Mard down and Wendy assured me they're just gonna have a nasty headache when they wake up," his wife (that was  _also_ weird to say - not to say he didn't like saying it, because goddamn if it didn't send a little flutter through his stomach every time) murmured. "I figured I'd take a power nap."

"Good call."

"Bwaa," Erika cooed. She dropped her head back onto his chest and flailed her little legs, beating out some unknown tune against his stomach. Lucy's hand joined her feet. He scoffed inwardly. What was he, a drum-set?

Ah, what the hell. He lifted his free hand and joined in, steadfastly ignoring Lucy's giggles.

It was at times like these Erik wondered what would have happened if he hadn't decided to string up lights on his balcony seven years ago. Would he have met Lucy? Spent over a month falling in love with her? Gotten married, had Erika? 27-year-old Erik would have  _balked_ at the very notion of having a baby. The famed Cobra with a child. His professors and foster parents would be throwing  _fits_. As far as anyone was concerned, he was married to his work and nothing could peel him away from it. Except his own ego, which drove him to string up those stupid lights (which now hung on the tree downstairs) because Macbeth dared him to.

He owed the man a drink, provided his narcoleptic ass ever woke up.

Something crashed downstairs, pulling him out of his reverie. Lucy groaned and ended the beat. "Ten bucks says that's Laxus."

"Fifteen says Natsu and Gray woke up and he knocked them out again," he countered.

"Should I go check?"

"Nah, we got three minutes before someone comes up to bother us. Plenty of time to nap."

"There's a packet of gummy worms hidden in here somewhere. Rock solid, but…"

"I love you," Erik said sincerely.

"Awww, say that again so I can record it and play it back in the doctor's lounge for everyone to hear."

"Go strawberry yourself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fairy Tail etc etc


End file.
